CONTENTS COPYRIGHTED 1030
The
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Jack Williamson
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Table of Contents
Feature Story:
THE COMETEERS (Part 1) . . Jack Williamson . 6
The sequel to the 14 Legion of Space” — with all the aura that sur-
rounded the Purple Hall — in four parts.
Novel:
MATHEMATICA PLUS . . . John Russell Fearn . . 90
The sequel to “Mathematica” — in which equations are created — this
time positive balances.
Novelette:
DOOMED BY THE PLANETOID . D. D. Sharp ... 58
A fast-moving tale of the spaccway s in which adventure plays a part.
Short Stories:
RED STORM ON JUPITER . . Frank Belknap Long, Jr. 32
Vivid descriptions of the greatest planet of them all.
ELIMINATION Don A. Stuart ... 45
Madness and science walk hand in hand.
THE WEAPON Raymond Z. Gallun . . 79
How would a heat ray work? Here’s the answer.
THE W-62’S LAST FLIGHT . . Clifton B. Kruse . .115
The I. 8. P. fights a losing fight in the old ship.
Serial Novel:
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT Eando Binder . . .126
Ending the epic of an all-absorbing being.
Readers ’ Department:
BRASS TACKS (The Open House of Controversy) . . . 155
EDITOR’S PAGE 78
Cover Painting by Howard V. Brown
Story Illustrations by Brown, Marchioni, Thompson, Hopper,
Saaty, Schneeman
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ADVERTISING SECTION
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THE COMETEERS
The Sequel to i4 The Legion of Space”
tracing the destiny of the people of
Earth in their battle with a galaxy
PART ONE
AH, LAD ! Wait a bit, lad !” moaned
the bald, blue-nosed fat man.
L JL “Old Giles can’t hold a pace so
mortal swift. He’s not the man he was
twenty years and more ago, when he
went fighting out to bloody Yarkand,
with the great adventure of the legion,
to save the blessed human race !”
Puffing, the old man paused amid the
bright verdure of the roof garden. His
fishy eyes glanced back toward the slim,
towering central pylon of the Purple
Hall, behind them.
"No, lad,” he pleaded, “remember
that Giles Habibula is only a poor old
soldier, ill, crippled, tottering on the
brink of his precious grave!”
His fat hand caught at the sleeve of
Bob Star’s uniform. It was the green
of the legion of space. It bore no in-
signia of rank, nor any decoration for
service to the system.
“Tell me, lad,” he asked, “where are
you dragging poor old Giles, so mortal
early in the morning, before he has
tasted his miserable scrap of breakfast ?”
Bob Star’s trim form had stopped be-
side a mass of snow-white bloom. Like
his father, John Star, he was small-
boned, quick, active. His lean, cleanly
molded face was briefly lighted with a
smile. His clear blue eyes looked back
at the short, waddling figure of Giles
Habibula, warm with a little glow of
affection.
“All right, Giles,” he said pleasantly.
“But hurry! I’m going to the little
observatory, at the end of the roof.”
“But tell me, lad, what’s your mortal
haste ?” inquired the old man, plaintively.
“Will the blessed stars fall out of space
before we’ve had breakfast?”
The brief smile had gone. Bob Star’s
thin face was left sober, grimly strained,
almost prematurely old. Suddenly
anxious, half fearful, his blue eyes left
the vivid greenery of the fragrant roof,
and climbed into the purple-black sky.
“What’s the matter, lad?” persisted
Giles Habibula. “You’re too young to
look so mortal grave.”
“I woke up before dawn this morn-
ing,” Bob Star told him, in a slow,
worried tone. “I don’t know what woke
me. But my head was worse than
usual” — he touched a pale, singular
scar on his forehead — “and I couldn’t
go back to sleep.
“Looking out of my window, I saw
something new in the sky — just a little
greenish fleck. It was in Virgo, near
the star Vindemiatrix. It wasn't very
big. But I couldn’t understand it ; and,
somehow, as I lay there, staring at it,
with the old pain throbbing in my head,
the most dreadful feeling came over me.
The thing began to seem like a horrible
eye staring out of space, and — well,
anyhow, Giles, I’m afraid !”
A curious look — Bob Star thought it
the shadow of consternation — passed
across the yellow moon of the old man’s
face. But his thin voice protested, un-
changed : “So you drag poor old Giles
up here on the roof, just to look at a
mortal star?”
by JACK WILLIAMSON
“Twelve million miles long. That means it isn’t solid matter —
couldn’t be! But what "
8
ASTOUNDING STORIES
“But it isn’t a star,” objected Bob
Star, in a puzzled tone. “It isn’t sharp
enough to be a nova. Besides, no star
ever had that strange, pale-green color.
Perhaps it’s a comet — but any comet
should have been detected and reported
long ago, by the big gravity- free ob-
servatories out in space. I don’t know
what it is!
“It has gone out of sight, since the
Sun came up. But I’m going to try to
pick it up with the telescope. I don’t
know why the thing made me so afraid.
Might have been the color of it ; colors
have queer emotional effects.
"Anyhow, it set my nerves on edge.
I came up here as soon as I could get
into my uniform.”
“Ah, lad, I know you did,” panted
the old man, bitterly. “For I had to
tumble my poor, aching old bones out
of bed, and drag them along with you.
Often I wish that Hal and I had been
made the bodyguards of some lazier
youth, lad. You know you are never
still : you never rest.”
“I’m sorry, Giles,” whispered Bob
Star. “I suppose it’s my head that
makes me restless. But come on to the
observatory.”
THE OLD MAN sighed, and wiped
his seamed yellow face with the back
of his fat hand.
“Ah, me !” he puffed, gloomily. “That
mortal comet! It might have waited
until my poor old bones were laid to
rest. But it must come to disturb the
last days of an ailing old man with talk
of such bloody danger as makes the
monstrous Medusae of Yarkand seem
like pet kittens.
“Poor old Giles! No sooner does he
sit down, with a bottle of wine in his
trembling old hand, to stretch his legs
before the fire of life and doze away
into the last precious sleep, until this
fearful comet must come, to start him
awake with the threat of stellar war.
Ah, in life’s name ”
Shocked, Bob Star seized the old
man’s massive arm. His blue eyes
bored into the fishy ones of Giles Habi-
bula.
"Stellar war?” he rapped. “Then
there is really danger? And you knew
about the comet— -already ?”
Bewildered, the old man shook the
wrinkled yellow globe of his bald head.
“Nothing, lad! In life’s name, I
swear ”
Bob Star’s hard fingers sank into his
flesh.
“Tell me, Giles ! And tell me why
you were keeping it from me. I’m no
frightened girl, Giles. I can bear
trouble.”
“Ah, well,” he yielded, reluctantly.
“After all, ’tis but a whisper — a whisper
in the legion. I have no secrets pf the
council, Bob. And ’twas your blessed
father who commanded us to keep it
from you. You’ll not let him know that
old Giles told you ”
“My father?” Bob Star was mutter-
ing, bitterly. “He doesn’t trust me,
Giles. He thinks I’m a weakling and a
coward ! I know he does !”
The old man shook his head.
“Not so, lad,” he said.
Bob Star jerked his head, as if to
shake off a clinging fear.
“Anyhow, Giles,” he said, “tell me
about the comet.”
“I have your promise, lad, not to tell
your father?’
“I promise,” agreed Bob Star. “Go
THE old legionnaire drew him cau-
tiously across a lush, yielding carpet of
grass, into the shelter of a mass of
white-flowering shrubs. His fishy eyes
darted furtively about the great roof,
and up at the purple tower that pierced
the dark sky of the little world. His
nasal voice sank to a hissing whisper.
"The mortal thing was first seen ten
weeks ago,” he revealed, “from the great
space observatory, beyond Jupiter. It
THE COMETEERS
9
was plunging toward the system, with
a speed that threw the precious astrono-
mers into fits.
“The thing is no common comet, they
say. It is no frail thing of pebbles and
shining gas. The blessed astronomers
don’t know what it is. Rut it’s bigger
than any true comet ever was. The
mortal thing is near twelve million miles
long, lad ! And it has a thousand times
the mass of the Earth.
“It’s no member of the solar system.
It’s a strange body, out of the mortal
black gulf of space amid the stars.
“In the past few weeks, lad, the mortal
thing has upset all the calculations of the
astronomers. Its motion seems inde-
pendent of outside forces. It slowed
down, lad, when the pull of the Sun
should have increased its speed! Now
it is almost motionless. They say that
it has assumed a regular elliptic orbit
about our Sun, out five billion miles —
’tis far beyond Pluto.”
The small, red eyes looked back across
the garden, furtively. They looked
hastily into the dark sky, and back again.
And Bob Star knew, suddenly, that Giles
Habibula was frightened.
“The mortal thing,” he said — and his
thin voice quivered, “doesn’t behave like
a comet. It acts like a space flier, Bob
— like a space ship twelve million miles
long.”
“What else?” whispered Bob Star.
His voice was low with the hush of ex-
citement, and edged with fear.
Giles Habibula sighed noisily, and
shook his head.
“Ah, lad, that’s all that I know of it,
all that anybody knows. The council
has taken alarm — that’s why your father
was called to Earth, to meet with them
at the Green Hall. The observatories
have been ordered to make public no
further reports of the comet, for fear
of undue panic. And Jay Kalam is
making the legion ready to defend the
system, in the event of stellar war.
“You may know, lad, that a new flag-
ship is being built for the legion. The
Invincible, Jay named it. ’Tis the great-
est ship the system ever built, a thou-
sand feet long. It carries a vortex gun,
such as we used in the war with Stephen
Oreo.”
“Yes. What about it, Giles?”
“Well, there’s talk, lad, that some ex-
pedition will venture out in the In-
vincible, to investigate the mortal comet.
A cloud of green surrounds it, that no
telescope can pierce. The true nature
of the fearful thing is yet unknown.”
Bob Star was standing very straight
in the plain uniform that he had worn
a year. His dark head was uncovered
to the cold morning sun. The tense,
slender fingers of one hand were trac-
ing, as they often did, the white,
irregular scar on his tanned forehead.
His lean face was twisted to a mask of
bitter grimness.
His hard jaws clenched until they
were white. Then, abruptly, furiously,
he exploded : “My father told you to
keep it from me, eh? He treats me like
a sickly baby ! Why doesn't he tell you,
Giles, to rock me to sleep on your knee ?"
II.
THE TIME was the third decade of
the thirtieth century. The place was
Phobos, the tiny outer moon of Mars.
Once a ten-mile mass of barren stone,
it had been transformed by the scien-
tific magic of the planetary engineers
into a shining garden.
Gravity cells, installed in the center
of the satellite, insured terrestrial com-
fort. They retained the thin, artificial
atmosphere, and anchored the miniature
seas, the synthetic soil from which
sprang the luxuriant vegetation of dark
woodland and landscaped garden.
Against the dark, shining wealth of
the gardens, the colored glass of the
Purple Hall shone like a magnificent
jewel. Three thousand feet high, to
the rocket stage that crowned the square
10
ASTOUNDING STORIES
central tower, this ancestral dwelling was
the most famous, the most splendid,
within the limits of the system.
A minute planet of paradise, Phobos
belonged to John Star, his inherited
estate. Here, for twenty-two years, he
had guarded and cherished that lovely
woman, Aladoree, whose secret weapon,
known only by the symbol AKKA, was
the treasure and the fortress of the sys-
tem. Here, too, their son, Bob Star, had
been reared, save for the eight years
of his attendance at the legion academy
on Earth.
Bob Star and Giles Habibula had come
from an elevator, upon the vast roof
of the north wing. Breathing the
fragrance of new blooms, in the cold air
of morning, they had started toward a
low dome of white metal, at the end of
die roof.
His hard fists were clenched. Blackly,
Bob Star repeated : “Treated like a
taby ! And I don’t like it !”
“Lad,” queried Giles Habibula, plain-
tively, “why must you be always so
restless ? It’s poor old Giles who should
be impatient. The days left to him are
miserable and few. Why, lad, if I were
“I don't like it!” Bob Star broke out.
“It’s a year, now, since I left the
academy. And I’ve had no chance to do
anything. Dad keeps me shut up here.
I’d like to go out, even as a common
soldier in the legion, and learn to give
and take. But he won’t let me ”
“Wait, lad,” protested Giles Habibula.
“You are heir to the Purple Hall, and
to all Phobos. The greatest name
in the system will be yours, and the
greatest interplanetary fortune. Ah,
lad, what more could you want? You
are young, wealthy, free to live and
love.”
“Free?” Bob Star grimly echoed.
“And when the day comes,” the old
man went on, “you are to become the
keeper of AKKA. The secret weapon
alone will make you more powerful than
all the rest of mankind. It is because
of that responsibility waiting for you
that your parents guard you so, lad.
“Ah, me, Bob, but no sane man could
pull a gloomy face over such a lot as
yours ”
“They aren’t shielding me from re-
sponsibility to train me to bear it, Giles,”
Bob Star soberly protested. “It’s be-
cause they think I can’t !
“Don’t you see? I've always been a
sort of prisoner, except for those eight
years at the academy. From the first
day I could walk, you and Hal Samdu
have been standing guard over me.
“And now,” he said bitterly, “when
the comet has brought danger, adven-
ture, other men will go out to it. And
they won't even let me know of it !”
He swallowed ; his blue eyes glittered.
“Tell me, Giles,” he demanded, “what
adventure have I ever had ? Since I
was a child, and used to slip away ”
“Ah, lad, you were a precious nui-
sance,” mused the old man. “You used
to run away in the forest, toward the
south pole of Phobos ”
“You always found me and brought
me back.” Bob Star bit his quivering
lip. “You kept me a prisoner, and tor-
tured me with tales of the great things
that my father and you and Hal and the
commander did in the old days — how
you escaped from the prison here in the
Purple Hall, and seized a ship and fled
from the legion, to go out to the star
Yarkand and rescue mother from the
Medusae there, so that she could save the
system with AKKA.”
His voice trembled.
“Two years ago, I had a chance — in
the Jovian Revolt. But they made me
stay shut up in the academy quadrangle
on Catalina, while dad and Jay Kalam
went out to Jupiter to crush Stephen
Oreo.”
His voice went hard as he spoke that
name ! Stephen Oreo. And his hand
went unconsciously back to the scar on
his forehead.
THE COMETEERS
ir
“Lad, you’re a mortal fool,” chided
Giles Habibula. “Here we have good
food, good wine— fine old wine, from
the largest cellars in the system. We
have peace and comfort. And the shin-
ing gardens of Phobos are pleasant,
when an old man longs for a nap in the
sun.
“And old Giles doesn’t like the look
of that comet, lad. It has an evil,
greenish cast, and it acts as no comet
should. Ah, lad, let us forget the
comet,” he pleaded. “Come, let’s have
a taste of breakfast, and then find a
place to sit in the sun.
“Leave trouble alone, lad, and it will
come too mortal soon !”
“No, Giles,” said Bob Star, “I’m
going to have a look at it, with the tele-
scope.” And, he added grimly: “I’m
going to make dad get me a place on the
Invincible, if it goes out to the comet.”
“Ah, me!” Giles Habibula sighed re-
signedly. “You’ll be dragging Hal and
me into trouble, yet.” His old voice
plaintively thin, he implored : “Hurry,
lad, with all this. Remember we haven’t
had a blessed taste of breakfast !”
BOB STAR paused a moment at the
door of the little observatory. Its
white, gleaming dome stood at the north
end of the great roof. Beyond and far
below lay the convex surface of tiny
Phobos, the dark rich green of its for-
ests and meadows spangled with the
silver of artificial lakes.
Behind him, the square purple shaft
of the central tower soared into the
purple-black sky, where stars still shone.
Low in the east burned the small sun,
blue-white, intense. Opposite, west-
ward, hung the huge tawny disk of
desert Mars, its ocher-yellow surface
darkly marked with the fertile zones.
His blue eyes narrowed, drilling into
the somber purple of the sky above it.
He had seen the comet there, at dawn.
Giles Habibula sprawled himself on a
bench in the sun, beside the dome. He
fumbled in the capacious pockets of his
uniform, and produced a little empty
flask, with a graduated scale along the
side. He held it up to the sunlight, and
his fishy eye dwelt gloomily upon a
single lonely drop.
“Go on, lad,” he breathed moanfully.
“Make haste with your gazing at the
mortal comet. Poor old Giles will wait
for you. Old Giles is good for nothing,
now, but to roast his aching old bones
in the sun.”
Within the darkness of the little ob-
servatory, Bob Star seated himself at
the telescope. As it whirred in response
to his touch, the great barrel above
swung to search the void of space with
its photo-electric eye, and the pale beam
of the projector flashed across to the
concave screen.
The screen was a well of darkness.
Faint stars flecked it. The point of
white flame, he knew, was the third-
magnitude star Vindemiatrix. He
found the little patch of pallid, uncanny
green — the comet !
He stepped up the magnification.
Vindemiatrix and the faint stars slipped
away. The comet hung alone in the
chasm of utter darkness. It grew. It
was an ellipsoid of cloudy, pale-green.
A little football of green, strange fire,
he thought, drifting through that gulf
of ultimate night.
“Twelve million miles long,” he mut-
tered. “That means it isn’t solid matter
— couldn’t be! But what’s inside?”
USING ray filters and spectroscope,
with the full power of the electronic
circuits, he strove to pierce that veil of
dull-green. It was in vain. He sprang
to his feet and stopped the instrument,
impatiently snapping his fingers.
“No use,” he told Giles Habibula, out-
side. “I see the green surface of it.
But nothing gets through — not a ray!”
He shuddered a little.
He had never seen anything so
bafflingly weird, so strangely terrible, he
12
ASTOUNDING STORIES
thought, as that mysterious cloud be-
yond Pluto. The vastness of it over-
whelmed the mind. It was dreadful
with the chill mystery of the interstellar
wastes.
Giles Habibula rolled heavily to his
feet.
“Well, lad, you’ve seen it,” he
wheezed, cheerfully. “The best astrono-
mers in the system have done no more.
Shall we go down to look for break-
fast?”
Bob Star followed him, silently. His
mind was still lost in the labyrinth of
a vast consternation.
They were midway across the roof,
when Giles Habibula abruptly paused,
pointing westward with a heavy arm.
"What is it?” cried Bob Star, turning.
He saw it, then, a slender white
arrow, sliding across the great ocher
disk of Mars. Driven before it was a
pale tongue of blue flame. It passed
across the limb of Mars, and drifted up-
ward.
A sudden trembling eagerness had
overcome Bob Star. He stood trans-
fixed amid the shining foliage, staring
into the somber sky.
The blue flame wheeled and grew. A
rustling whisper came into the air, and
increased to a roaring gale of sound.
A slender, tapering spindle of silver
drifted above him, pushing roaring tor-
rents of flame.
It passed so near that he could see
the black dots of observation ports, and
the tiny-seeming letters that spelled :
Phantom Star.
It vanished above the rocket stage, on
the lofty purple tower. The roof
quivered ever so slightly under his feet.
And the thunder of the rockets faded.
Bob Star seized the thick arm of Giles
Habibula, and started running back to-
ward the elevator in the tower.
"Dad has come back from Earth,” he
cried. “I’m going to meet him. He’ll
know all about the comet, and what the
Green Hall Council has done!’
III.
“YOUR MOTHER is waiting in the
Green Room,” a guard in the corridor
told Bob Star. “There was an ultra-
wave message from your father. He
is coming to her there.”
He let Bob Star into the room. It
was large, its high walls paneled with
emerald glass and silver. From two
sides, vast windows overlooked the dark-
green and argent of the convex land-
scape. Floor and massive furnishings
were of Venusian hardwoods, polished
to ruby-red luster.
Bob Star’s mother, she who had been
Aladoree Anthar, was sitting in a great
red chair in the middle of the room,
quietly. She looked up quickly at his
entrance. Changing lights illuminated
her brown hair as she moved. And her
cool gray eyes were warmed with a ten-
der smile.
Her rich voice said : “You’re up early
this morning, son.”
Bob Star was standing at the door,
fighting a sudden nervous weakness. He
wanted to go across to his mother, and
kiss her, and tell her that she was beau-
tiful. But a stiff awkwardness had
seized him. And he wished bitterly that
she had been a common human being,
not the almost sacred keeper of the
mystic AKKA, and the most important
personage in the system.
His voice seeming strained and queer,
he asked : "Father is coming here ?”
The stately loveliness of her head
nodded ; the flowing lights in her hair
made unwonted tears flood his eyes.
“He has just landed. There was a
message for me to wait for him here,
alone. It must be something unusual.
He has been at the Green Hall. You
had better go, Bob, for a few minutes.
John wanted to see me alone.”
Bob Star stood rigid, silent, twisting
savagely at a button on his uniform. It
came off in his hand, and he looked
down at it, unseeingly.
THE COMETEERS
13
His mother rose suddenly, and came
across the polished floor.
“Why, Bob !’’ she cried, her voice
softly urgent. “What’s the matter?
You look so pale and strange.” Her
gentle hand caught his arm. “Why,
you're shaking, Bob ! Are you ill ?”
He looked at her, blinking angrily at
his tears.
“Why do you treat me so?” he gasped,
huskily. “Why do you?”
“Bob!” It was a hurt cry. “We’ve
always tried to be kind ”
“Kind!” he muttered, bitterly. “Yes,
you’re always kind. But you don’t trust
me! You keep me shut up like a baby,
away from life. I want to have a
chance to do things, and meet danger
and adventure. I don’t care if I get
hurt ! It would be better to be killed,
than to be a prisoner here always ”
She was patting his shoulder, com-
fortingly. Her gray eyes were big with
distress.
“I’m sorry, Bob,” she said. “I had
no idea you felt that way. John and I
have always been very proud of you,
Bob. And you know that we have meant
for you to be the next keeper of AKKA.
You will have chance enough to do im-
portant things.”
“But how can I ever learn to bear
responsibility,” he demanded, “if you
treat me like a baby? I’ve been out of
the academy a whole year, now. And
I’ve had no chance ”
“I hope we haven’t sheltered you too
much, Bob.” The soft voice hesitated.
“There — there’s something I’d better
tell you, Bob.”
He stiffened, at the sudden gravity of
her voice.
“You know that you made a very
brilliant record at the academy, Bob.
Only one student has ever made a higher
average. He was Stephen Oreo.”
Bob Star winced from that name ; his
fingers drifted instinctively to the scar
on his forehead.
“When you finished. Bob, the in-
structors told your father that you had
worked too hard. The psychological
tests, they said, showed that you were
near a mental breakdown. The academy
doctors advised a year of complete rest
for you, before you undertook any duty.
That’s why you’ve been here, Bob. We
didn’t tell you, for fear it would worry
you.”
Bob Star was staring past her, at the
green-and-silver wall.
“It wasn’t work,” he whispered. “It
wasn’t work!”
His fingers were still tracing the pale
outline of the scar.
IN A MOMENT he looked around,
and saw that his father had come into
the room.
Striding silently across the scarlet
floor, John Star, as always, was straight
and trim in the green of the legion. He
was slender and hard and his youth was
well-preserved, so that he appeared
hardly older than his son. He still
looked, after twenty years as master of
the Purple Hall, as much the legionnaire
as when he quit the ranks.
He walked straight to Aladoree,
carrying in his hand a heavy sealed en-
velope. He administered a brief, sol-
dierly kiss, and handed her the envelope.
“Darling,” he said, “this is an order
from the Green Hall Council.”
Then his eyes found Bob Star, and
his lips compressed a little.
“Robert,” he said, “I wished to see
your mother alone.”
Bob Star stood for a moment speech-
less. The emerald-and-argent walls
were cold as ice. The scarlet floor was
a terrible void. His knees were going
to buckle, and he had nothing to hold to.
“Please, sir ”
He whispered two words, and his dry
throat stuck.
“Let him stay, John,” his mother said,
quietly.
Some of the ice thawed out of the
green walls, and the floor grew steady.
14
ASTOUNDING STORIES
“If it’s about tbe comet,” said Bob
Star, huskily, “I have seen it.”
“It is.” His eyes went to Aladoree,
and back. “Take a seat, Robert.”
Bob Star collapsed gratefully into a
massive red chair. He clung to the arms
of it, and tried to control his trembling,
his rushing breath.
The wide gray eyes of his mother
were looking slowly Up toward John
Star, from the bulky, impressive docu-
ment she had taken from the envelope.
Glancing up from the great seal of gold
and green, Bob Star saw that his
mother’s eyes were big with an incredu-
lous, shocked dismay.
“John,” her still voice said, “this is
an order for me to destroy the green
comet in Virgo, at once, with AKKA.”
John Star’s military head made a
sharp little nod.
“The resolution to destroy the comet
passed the Green Hall Council eight
hours ago,” he said huskily. “I brought
the order to you at the full speed of the
Phantom Star — a record crossing.”
The big gray eyes rested for a time
on John Star's lean, stern face. Then,
very soft and quiet and slow, Bob Star
heard his mother’s voice : “John, do you
know what you have asked me to do?”
John Star looked at her, with a sur-
prised impatience.
“I do,” he -said. “I spoke before the
council, in favor of the resolution. The
vote was very close. There were senti-
mental objections.”
“Perhaps I am sentimental, John,”
said the soft voice. “But I don’t want
to destroy the comet. It is a very won-
derful thing — so wonderful that our
scientists will not undertake to say what
it is. But I believe that there are worlds
within that green cloud, John — inhabited
worlds, advanced beyond anything we
can dream of — think what a science it
must be, John, that drives the comet
like a ship !
“You see what you’re asking me to
do, John? To negate in one instant
millions, billions of years of evolutionary
progress! To destroy the work of
millennias of intelligent effort, of ad-
vance! To sweep into nothingness
whole worlds!
“The comet seems strange to us, John.
It frightens us. But the beings of it
must be as far advanced as men — or ten
times as far. And they have as much
right to live as we do, John. Certainly
it is wrong to annihilate them, just be-
cause we are afraid.”
Still standing, John Star had drawn
himself up very straight.
“I spoke before the Green Hall for
the destruction of the comet,” he said,
with a hardness in his tone. “My argu-
ments are still good. To begin with, the
science of the Comefeers — that is the
term we have used for the beings, what-
ever they are, that drive the comet — is
far above our own.
“I am certain that, but for their lack
of AKKA, they could easily destroy
mankind. And I’m sure they do not
possess it; otherwise they would already
have attempted to use it.
“Their hostility is as certain as their
power.” An oratorical ring had come
into John Star’s voice, as if he were
quoting from his speech. “On Earth,
everywhere in the system, the necessi-
ties of survival have made enemies of
life forms even closely kin. And the
Cometeers are doubtless an alien form
of life — perhaps a form that we should
not recognize as life at all!
“Their very approach is evidence of
a purpose in relation to our worlds.
That purpose will be necessarily for
tbeir own benefit, because the Cometeers
are obviously a successful and hence sel-
fish form of life.
“But we have better proof than such
philosophic considerations that the Com-
eteers are deadly enemies !”
“What is that, John?” Aladoree softly
inquired.
“The Cometeers have already visited
most of our planets.”
THE COMETEERS
15
“People/’ cried Bob Star, “have actu-
ally seen them?”
John Star didn't look away from his
wife.
“The creatures of the comet,” he said,
“are— or made themselves for the occa-
sion of their visits — invisible ! They
came in some massive machine, whose
powerful etheric fields have disturbed
communication at the time of each sus-
pected visit.”
Quietly, Aladoree asked: “Exactly
what have they done ?”
“They have ■ been investigating our
defenses,” John Star told her. “The in-
visible ships, on each occasion, have
landed near some stronghold of the
legion. On Earth, twenty-four hours
ago, the invisible* raiders killed four
guards — very unpleasantly. They en-
tered a. locked vault that we had thought
impregnable. They escaped with a
precious military secret.”
JOHN STAR stepped a little toward
his wife. And his lean face was sud-
denly pleading. 'He was no longer the
soldier and orator, but a man, anxiously
begging.
“Please, Aladoree,” he said. “It is a
terrible thing — but don’t you see you
must do it? And right away? Your
life is in danger, darling, if you don’t!
For all we know, one of the invisible
raiders may be with us, in this very
room.”
He looked about, uneasily. And Bob
Star saw agony on his face, tears in his
eyes, as he took Aladoree suddenly in
his arms. He was surprised ; almost he
had forgotten that his father was a man,
as well as a soldier.
“Please, darling,” he whispered.
“What was the secret,” asked Ala-
doree, “that they took?”
John Star looked at his son; his lips
drew tight.
“They learned,” he said, “that the
prisoner known by the name of Merrin
is still alive.”
Bob Star watched dismay sweep the
color from his mother’s face. He saw
the faint, shocked nod of her fine head.
“Well, John,” he heard her still voice,
“if they know about — about Merrin,
perhaps you are right. Still I believe
that it is a terrible crime. But if the
council has ordered it — and if the Com-
eteers know about Merrin — then I shall
destroy the green comet.”
IV.
“MUST I GO?” Bob Star asked.
With a grave little smile, his mother
shook her head.
“No, Bob,” she said. “You may
watch, since one day you are to be
keeper of AKKA. There’s little to see,”
she added. “And you could watch a
thousand times without learning the
secret, for the control of AKKA is more
than half mental.
“Really, Bob,” she added, “there is no
such thing as matter, as we usually pic-
ture it. Matter is really energy, locked
in stable constructs. And that energy,
in the last analysis, partakes of the na-
ture of mind.”
Already, as Bob Star watched, she
had removed half a dozen little objects
from her person: pen, mechanical pen-
cil, watch, a metal ornament from her
dress, an iron key. With a deft, trained
swiftness, she unscrewed the barrel
from the pen, slipped two tiny perfor-
ated disks from the cover of the watch.
Upon the mechanical pencil, whose
working parts served as a fine adjust-
ment, she began to assemble a tiny, odd-
looking contrivance. The chain of the
ornament formed a connection ; the clip
of the pen would function as a key.
“That,” whispered Bob Star, in-
credulously, “will destroy the comet?
That tiny thing destroyed Earth’s old
Moon ?”
“With the aid of this instrument.
Bob,” she said quietly, “my mind can
destroy any object in the universe. Size
16
ASTOUNDING STORIES
All was quiet until we
approached Callisto.
Then
and distance don’t matter. The effect is
a fundamental, absolute change in the
warp of space, which reduces matter
and energy alike to meaningless anoma-
lies.”
Bob Star was silent for a moment,
breathless. And he shrank a little, with
startled, involuntary dread, from this
gravely smiling woman. Suddenly she
seemed no longer his mother, but a
strange and terrible being. Her face
was shining with a calm, passionless
serenity.
“Mother — mother,” he whispered.
“You’re like — like a goddess !”
It seemed strange that she should hear
him, in her remote detachment. But
she smiled at him, briefly, and said : “It’s
lonely to be a goddess, Bob.”
Her eyes left him again. Presently
she said abruptly, from her absorption:
“Only one thing can serve as a barrier
against the weapon. That is the counter
warp in space, created by another master
of the principle of AKKA.”
The little instrument seemed to be fin-
AST— 1
THE COMETEERS
17
ished. She was adjusting it, lifting it
to sight through the tiny holes in the
little disks. Bob Star wished to ques-
tion her about it. But the tranquil, al-
most divine authority upon her glowing
face stilled his tongue.
A curious strong resonance sounded
in her voice when she said to John Star,
“I am ready.”
They walked to the vast transparency
of a west window; Bob Star saw them
for a moment outlined against the pur-
ple-black, star-shot sky of Phobos. And
Aladoree was about to lift the weapon,
when John Star caught her arm, saying
AST— 2
tersely, “A ship! What does that
mean ?”
Aladoree lowered her small imple-
ment, saying: “I shall wait and see.”
Beyond them, Bob Star saw a pale
blur of blue flame, against the dark of
the sky. And he heard the whisper and
the rushing and the thunderous roar of
rockets. The air was alive and trem-
bling with a mighty sound, and he
glimpsed a mountain of white metal,
flashing by the window.
For a little time he was bathed in
those thundering seas of sound, and his
eyes were blinking against the darkness
18
ASTOUNDING STORIES
that had followed the dazzle of the rock-
ets. Then the red floor rocked under
his feet, and the mighty voice was
abruptly still.
In the sudden silence, John Star’s
voice sounded curiously small and far
away.
“It’s Jay,” he was saying. “He fol-
lowed me with the Imnncible! It’s too
big to land on the rocket stage. He had
to come down in the forest.”
He pursed his thin lips.
“I don’t know what he wants. But it
must be' secret and urgent, or there
would have been some message on the
ultra-wave. But you must not wait,” he
said sternly. “You have the order from
the council.”
“But I shall,” said Aladoree. “Per-
haps the comet need not be destroyed.”
BOB STAR had joined them at the
great window. A thousand feet below
and a mile away, he saw a shining moun-
tain of argent metal. The tapering
cylinder of the Imnncible — slender-
seeming, for all its vastness — lay in a
wide meadow, walled in with forest.
The grass about it was black and smok-
ing from the rocket blasts.
Even from this height, the gleaming
miracle of it appeared colossal. The
men appearing upon the mirrorlike sheet
of its deck were black specks, merely,
all but invisible.
Bob Star felt a momentary glow of
pride in the legion and mankind. That
thousand- foot, shining wonder was the
most splendid, the most powerful ma-
chine that men had ever made. Newly
designed geodyne generators gave it
speed and acceleration almost incalcu-
lable. New, refractory alloys made the
mass of its hull invulnerable. Its chief
defensive weapon, the atomic vortex
gun, could desolate planets.
Silent, awe-struck, he watched as a
low, streamlined deck house collapsed,
and a ten-man rocket flier catapulted
1 from the hull. It lifted, a mere bright-
winged insect above the overwhelming,
refulgent mass of the Invincible, and
wheeled toward the rocket stage above
the tower.
Within the green room, his mother
wag still holding that tiny, singular little
instrument in her small hand. Fasci-
nated, Bob Star stared back at it again.
It was so little! The materials of it
were such commonplace things ! It
looked so utterly insignificant !
“And that,” he muttered, “could
destroy the Invincible !”
“That,” said his mother, softly, “and
my will.”
And, seeing the burning curiosity in
his eyes, she added: “I carry the in-
strument taken apart, and disguised, so
that it cannot easily fall into other hands
But there’s really little danger. No
manipulation of the instrument, alone,
could have any effect. The mental con-
trol is essential.”
Bob Star made the legion salute,
briskly, when Jay Kalam entered the
room.
Oddly, although he had been the
legion’s commander for two decades and
more, he looked far less soldierly than
John Star. He was slender and dark
and tall, without any military stiffness
of bearing. His fluent ease of manner
had never deserted him. And his green-
and-gold uniform could never disguise
the grave reserve of the scholarly gen-
tleman.
His thin, almost austere face was com-
posed, but his manner betrayed urgent
haste.
“John!” he called imperatively from
the doorway. “Aladoree! Have you
destroyed the comet?”
Aladoree shook her head.
“We saw you coming, Jay. We
waited. But I’m ready ”
His lips relaxed; the breath sighed
out of him.
“Then I’m in time,” he said thank-
fully. “The council has cancelled its
order for the destruction of the comet.”
THE COMETEERS
19
‘‘What’s that?” snapped John Star,
his voice hard and thin as the sound of
breaking glass. “Why ?”
Deliberately, Jay Kalam drew from
the ]x>cket of his uniform another heavy
envelope, which he gravely presented to
Aladoree.
“This is the official cancellation of the
order for the destruction of the green
comet,” he said.
GRATEFULLY, her eyes scanned
the document which was magnificent
with the great seal of the Green Hall.
“I’m glad,” she said. “It would have
been an unthinkable crime.”
“Why?” demanded John Star, again.
His lips were tight, his narrow face pale
and stern. “What’s the reason for the
change ?”
Jay Kalam had turned toward him,
calmly.
“John,” he said quietly, “many of us
felt that it would be wrong to destroy
the comet, unless it proves absolutely
necessary. The murder of a man is
nothing, John, against the murder of a
world. And it would be murder to
destroy the comet before we must.”
“But, Jay,” John Star protested,
earnestly, “we know that the Cometeers
are hostile. We know that they’ve found
out about Merrill. Every moment that
the comet exists increases the danger to
the system.”
The commander nodded his dark head,
slowly.
“I know your arguments, John,” he
said. “They are grave. The system is
no doubt in severe danger from the
comet. We must take stern measures
to assure our safety.
"But we aren’t justified, yet, in anni-
hilating the comet. I feel that, John,
very deeply. I believe that the council
was swayed unduly by your arguments,
John. After you departed, I got per-
mission to speak, myself, before the
Green Hall, in favor of a more moderate
policy.
“I suggested that beings so far ad-
vanced as the Cometeers must be, must
know, justice, magnanimity, and mercy.
“And the council, as you can see,
voted with me, by a good majority.
There is still justice and mercy in the
human heart, John. And I hope,” he
added gravely, “that it may not betray
us into catastrophe. For I can feel the
pressure of your arguments, John.
“I should have sent a message to stop
you, on the ultra-wave,” he went on.
"But it would be folly to discuss such
matters upon the ether, when the Com-
eteers are doubtless picking up, ana-
lyzing, decoding, and studying every
word. And you had only two hours
start, I thought the Invincible would
overtake you. ft seems that I was al-
most too late.”
John Star was staring at him. His
thin face was pale and rigid. And his
voice, when he spoke, sounded to Bob
Star hoarse and stern and terrible.
“Jay,” he said, “you will wish you had
been too late. And the system will.
That paper” — he jerked his head — “is
the death warrant of mankind !”
“I hope, John,” said Jay Kalam, “that
you are wrong.”
“I wish I were,” said John Star,
grimly. “I have no desire to be need-
lessly ruthless. But I know this, Jay:
By saving the comet you have murdered
the system.”
V.
THE SILENCE of terrible strain,
for a little time, reigned in the green
room. John Star stood motionless upon
the great red floor. His pale face was
bleak and rigid as a mask of death.
Bob Star heard the sudden catch in
his father’s breath, saw the wet glitter
in his eyes, watched him stride to Ala-
doree and take her in his arms. After
a moment he pushed her a little away
from him, and turned with his arm still
around her waist, to look at Jay Kalam.
20
ASTOUNDING STORIES
“Well, Jay,” he asked, in a flat, dry
voice, “if we can’t destroy the comet,
what are we going to do?”
Jay Kalam came a little toward him,
and grasped the back of a massive red
chair.
“The Green Hall left the action to be
taken in my hands,” he said gravely. “I
considered the situation very carefully,
during the flight from Earth. I have a
plan that I think is safe.”
John Star faced him, listening in-
tently.
“There are three things,” he went on
soberly, “that we must do : protect Ala-
doree, guard the prisoner, Merrin, and
find out if the system is in real danger
from the comet.
“The first I shall leave to you, John.”
John Star nodded with a grim resolu-
tion ; his arm instinctively grew tight
about the woman beside him.
“I think the Purple Hall, here,” Jay
Kalam went on, “is no longer safe. The
defenses are good— but so were the de-
fenses of the vault on Earth, which the
Cotneteers raided. Their invisibility, I
think, would enable them to land and
enter the building, undetected. And evi-
dently they have strange and powerful
weapons.
“I suggest, John, that you take Ala-
doree away, upon the Phantom Star,
immediately. Where, I will leave to you.
You can send information to some mem-
ber of the council, about how to com-
municate with you, if the destruction
of the comet becomes necessary. Other-
wise, the fewer who know where you
are, the better.”
“Yes, sir.”
John Star made an unaccustomed
legion salute.
“The defenses of Merrin,” Jay Kalam
went on, “are already as good as the
Legion can make them — except in one
particular. I think that I shall call upon
Bob, to make them complete.”
His lean face turned to Bob Star, his
dark eyes appraised him.
“Are you ready, Bob, to undertake a
very important, and very dangerous
duty, for the legion and the system ?”
“Yes, sir,” replied Bob Star, instantly.
“Jay,” John Star said protestingly,
“I was planning to take Robert with us,
in the Phantom Star. I don’t believe
that he is ready for duty.”
Aladoree had caught at his arm.
“John,” she interposed, “Bob has just
been talking to me about his situation.
I believe that we have made a mistake
in keeping him here. I think that what
he needs is a chance to prove himself.”
“Thank you, mother!” Bob Star cried.
And he turned eagerly to the grave com-
mander. “Please,” he begged. “Take
me ! It doesn’t matter how hard or how
dangerous it is. I’d rather be killed,
than be shut up here like a prisoner any
longer.”
“John,” Kalam was saying to Bob's
father, “for this service I must call upon
your son. No other man will do. You
recall the adjustment of the Jovian Re-
volt. There is the matter of a certain
oath.”
John Star nodded silently. For a
long moment he looked at his son, with
an odd question in his eyes. Suddenly
he nodded.
“Very good,” he said. That was all.
“For the third matter,” Jay Kalam
said again, “I am going out to the comet,
in the Invincible. We shall keep in
touch with the Green Hall, so long as
possible, with tight-beam ultra-wave. I
hope to discover the true nature of the
comet, and whether it really represents
the danger that you believe it does,
John.”
John Star came forward and shook
the commander’s hand. He swallowed,
and said huskily: “Jay!”
“I think that I shall see you again,
John,” said Jay Kalam, evenly. “If we
don’t return, I concede that it will be
necessary to destroy the comet. It will
take us five days to reach it, five to re-
turn. Give us two more.
THE COMETEERS
21
“If the Invincible has not returned in
twelve days, John, you may consider us
lost — and my objection to the destruction
of the comet at an end.”
He paused a moment, and turned to
Bob Star.
“Bob,” he said, “you will come with
us on the Invincible to Merrin’s prison.
There will be time on the crossing for
me to explain the details and the im-
portance of your duty. You may make
your farewells. We will go immedi-
ately.”
John Star came to the commander,
saying: “I have decided where to take
Aladoree. As for communication ”
He lowered his voice.
ALADOREE was coming across the
red floor, to Bob Star. Her tall loveli-
ness checked his heart with a little pang
of yearning affection ; and the liquid
melody of her voice, when she spoke,
brought back to him all the bittersweet
of childhood.
She took his hand in a warm and
tremulous grasp. Her eyes swept fondly
up and down his trim, straight figure,
and tears were swelling in their corners.
“Bob,” she breathed, “kiss your
mother! You haven’t kissed me, Bob
since nine years ago — since the day you
went away, to the academy. And I
think” — her clear voice quivered — “I’m
afraid, Bob, that we shall never be to-
gether again!”
He touched the bright warmth of her
lips, briefly. A sudden cruel tension
had closed on his chest. His throat
ached. The beauty of her face swam in
his tears.
“My beautiful, beautiful mother!” he
whispered. And he asked, swiftly :
“Why are you afraid ?”
“I wish” — she breathed — “I wish al-
most that we had destroyed the comet,
Bob. I’m afraid your father is right.”
“Why?” said Bob, again.
After a moment of silence, she said,
“Jay Kalam will tell you about the man
we call Merrin, Bob.” A cold dread
was in her tone. “I saw him, once. It
was after he was a prisoner. He was
shackled, guarded. And yet, somehow,
he was terrible.”
Staring past Bob, her eyes had grown
wide again, and dark with a shadow.
And still her voice was hushed with fear.
“He was a giant, Bob. There was a
splendor in him, and a dreadful strength.
His eyes were shining with an uncon-
quered power. He’s more than a man,
Bob.
“He's like a rebel god. And he cares
no more for the rest of humanity than
a god might. His mind, his spirit, are
as splendidly powerful as his body —
but they aren’t human. Somehow you
must admire him. But you fear him
more. He’s alien as a god.
“He didn’t speak to me, Bob. He
simply looked at me, as they led him
across to his cell — taking mincing little
steps, in his shackles. His blue eyes
were burning — and they were cold as
ice. They were undefeated, carelessly
unafraid.
“He laughed at me, from a distance
I could never reach across. He was a
prisoner, manacled before me. But his
laughter was as carelessly mocking as
that of a malicious god, looking out of
another dimension.
“You must try to guard him well,
Bob. For in him you are guarding the
lives and the happiness of all the human
race.”
Astonished, puzzled, Bob Star whis-
pered fervently, “I will.”
Her hand grew tight on his. Her
other patted his straight shoulder.
“Come, Bob,” Jay Kalam was saying.
“We must go.”
He embraced his mother. The
warmth of her slender body brought to
his eyes the sting of sudden tears.
“I love you, Bob,” she was breathing.
"And I’m — oh ! so afraid !” She shiv-
ered, against him. “Be careful, son.
Dgm't let Merrin escape!”
22
ASTOUNDING STORIES
At the door, Bob Star shook the
strong hand of his bronzed, military-
father.
“Good-by, Robert,” he said, with an
unwonted huskiness of emotion. “Your
mother and I may see you again, soon.
I hope that we may. But, whatever
happens, remember that you are an offi-
cer in the legion of space.”
“Yes, sir,” whispered Bob Star.
And his hand rose in the legion salute.
In the doorway he stopped abruptly,
at sight of the seamed, yellow moon face
of Giles Habibula, who was waiting in
the corridor.
“My old guards,” he asked quickly of
Jay Kalam, “may they go?”
Jay Kalam's lean, dark face warmed
to the glow of old memories.
“Giles and Hal?” he said. “Of
course ! Have them come on.”
VI.
A CONCEALED DOOR behind the
Invincible’s chart room opened into a
long chamber that it surprised Bob Star
to find, upon a warship of space. Golden
light from hidden sources gleamed upon
the rich luster of heavy rugs. The pale
ivory walls were hung with the dark
simplicity of Titanian tapestries. The
massive furnishings, in silver and black,
were luxuriously simple. The high
shelves of ancient books and the opti-
phone, with its tall cabinet of records
in several languages, betrayed the
scholarly aesthete in the master of the
room.
The Invincible was driving out. away
from Phobos, away from yellow-red
Mars and the Sun. Her new-design
geodyne generators — electro-magnetic
geodesic deflectors — gave her a positive
acceleration no other ship of the system
had ever reached. Every atom of ship
load and crew was deflected infini-
tesimally from the space-time continuum
of four dimensions, and thus freed of
the ordinary limitations of acceleration
and velocity, was driven around space,
rather than through it, by a direct re-
action against the space warp itself.
But in that hidden room, even the
vibrant droning of the geodynes was
shut away, as if it had been a room in
another space. There was no faintest
sense of the ship’s tremendous velocity.
And the crispness of the cool artificial
air suggested fragrant spring in the
woods of Earth.
Jay Kalam gave Bob Star a com-
fortable chair, saying: “I’m going to
tell you now, Bob, about the prisoner
we call Merrin, and the details of your
duty in the present emergency.”
“Tell me,” Bob Star asked, his voice
low and tense, “Merrin — is he — is he
Stephen Oreo?”
Upon the commander’s dark, lean face
appeared the faint reflection of a sup-
pressed astonishment.
“Bob,” he asked, with alarm betrayed
by the quickness of his voice, “how —
why do you think that ?”
“My mother described Merrin,” Bob
Star said. “And I knew there couldn’t
be another such a man. But I thought”
— his lean fingers came up, as they so
often did, to the pale, odd scar on his
forehead— “I thought Stephen Oreo was
dead, since the Jovian Revolt.”
The commander’s dark, austere face
had relaxed with relief.
“I’m glad that’s how you knew,” he
said. “For Stephen Oreo is dead —
buried — to all save a trusted few.” His
face was grave with the question : “You
knew him?”
“I knew him,” said Bob Star. His
voice was abruptly hard, and his fingers
trembled, tracing the ragged outlines of
the scar.
“When?”
“Nine years ago,” said Bob Star, in a
tone that was strained and grim. “He
was in the graduating section, during my
first semester at the academy, on Earth.
He was handsome, brilliant. At first I
was attracted to him; then ”
THE COMETEERS
23
His lean jaws closed with a snap.
Jay Kalam’s dark eyes were warm
with sympathy.
“Bob, you had trouble?”
Bob Star’s head jerked in a savage
little nod.
“It was our affair,” he said. “I was
going to find him, after my graduation,
and settle it. But I thought he was
dead.”
“You are going to meet him again,”
Jay Kalam promised gravely. With a
quiet authority, he said, “Tell me about
your quarrel.”
Bob Star hesitated.
“I haven’t told any one — not even my
parents.”
He looked up at Jay Kalam, his lean
face shadowed with long-remembered
bitterness. His eyes warmed to the un-
derstanding he saw there, and he nodded
in respect to the commander’s grave
authority.
“You know,” he began, “the tradition
of hazing at the academy ?”
Jay Kalam nodded.
“The officers tolerate it,” he said. “It
is believed to be good for discipline.”
“You know the rule, then,” Bob Star
went on, “that each new cadet must
accept and obey one command from each
man in the graduating section?
“It isn't bad, commonly. The com-
mands are usually harmless. The new
men are eager to obey. The custom
makes for fun and comradeship.
“But Stephen Oreo was no usual stu-
dent. A giant of a man ! He was re-
markably handsome, and an outstanding
athlete. His hair was red as flame. And
his eyes were a peculiar bright, cold-
blue, always shining with a clever,
devilish malice. In his studies he was
the most brilliant student ever in the
academy.”
BOB STAR’S narrowed blue eyes
were looking past the tall commander,
at the dark-hued, simple patterns of a
Titanian hanging. In the pain of an
old injury, he had forgotten his first awe
of Jay Kalam. His words fell swiftly,
hard as slivers of ice.
"Stephen Oreo must have had no real
friends, I think,” he said. “All the boys
must have feared him. Yet he had a
kind of popularity. His remarkable
strength and his malicious wit made it
uncomfortable to be his enemy.
“More than that, he had a kind of
fascination. He was a born leader. His
reckless audacity matched his uncommon
abilities. He would dare anything. His
pride fitted his capacities ; it would have
won contempt for any lesser man — but
he was anything but contemptible.
“That pride made him try to excel
in everything — usually with success. It
seemed to me that he had a jealous
enmity toward every one else, that he
hated and scorned every rival. He loved
no one ; he was completely selfish in
every friendship.
“And,” said Bob Star, “from the first
day he hated me.”
“Why?” asked Jay Kalam, quietly.
“Jealousy, I suppose. He knew that
I was John Star’s heir, and that one day
I would be keeper of AKKA. He was
jealous of that wealth and power.”
“Did he mistreat you?”
Jay Kalam was looking at Bob Star’s
fingers, still tracing the scar.
“From the first day,” said Bob Star,
“he injured roe in every way he could.
He tried to prevent my winning any
honors, and to make me unpopular with
the instructors and the students. He
made me the butt of practical jokes. He
was clever, and he had influence.
He did a good deal.
“But there was only one thing that I
can’t forget.”
“What was that, Bob?”
“One night,” Bob Star said swiftly, “I
was walking alone on the campus — my
nerves were worn out from my first ex-
amination on geodesic navigation. In
24
ASTOUNDING STORIES
the dark I met Stephen Oreo, with three
of his friends. Or perhaps I shouldn’t
call them friends; it was fear that held
them to him, not affection.
“Stephen Oreo called to me to stop,
and I did. He asked me if I had ac-
cepted any command from him. I told
him that I hadn’t. He turned to the
three others. They whispered. I heard
the others snicker. And then Stephen
Oreo turned to me, with a malicious
glitter in his blue eyes, and told me his
command.”
Bob Star paused. His lean face was
white with the pain of memory.
“What was the command?”
“He told me to speak my mother’s
name,” whispered Bob Star, through
white lips, “and another w'ord.
“I told him that I wouldn’t do it. He
reminded me that he had the traditional
right to inflict penalties on me, if I re-
fused to obey. I told him to go ahead.
“Near us, on the campus, was a little
isolated laboratory, that had been built
to test omega rays as weapons. Stephen
Oreo had been working there, and he
had a key. They took me into the little
room, so that they wouldn’t be inter-
rupted — for I had made friends, in
spite of Stephen Oreo.
“They did various things, and I didn’t
speak. Stephen Oreo’s terrible pride
was burning cold in his blue eyes. And
he told me that he would make me yield,
if he had to kill me — even if it meant
his own life, for murder.
“I told him to go on.
“He exhausted the usual penalties,
and thought of various others. He was
clever, and he had a taste for such work.
Finally, he had his three companions
throw me on the floor. They were al-
ready frightened ; they wanted to let me
go. But he laughed at them, and threat-
ened to murder and dismember me, and
let them die with him, for the crime.
“In the end, they held me. And he
turned the omega-ray projector on my
head. It was a new thing, then; that
was before its effects were fully known.
The council has since made its use illegal
as a weapon, or even in the laboratory.”
JAY KALAM nodded a little, with-
out speaking. His dark, rigid face had
grown a little pale.
“At first the ray burned only the sur-
face — it merely stung, like the Sun
under a burning glass. But Stephen
Oreo began stepping up the penetration.
The flame of it burned deeper and deeper
into my brain.”
Bob Star’s voice had become low and
husky.
“For a while I was horribly afraid — ■
afraid that I would yield to his torture.
But, suddenly, with that flame burning
into my brain, I felt that I was strong
enough. I thought that nothing he could
do would beat me. And I laughed back
at him. I promised, then, to kill him.
“I struggled a little. But that was no
use. The others were all in their last
year, and athletes. I was twelve years
old, and half paralyzed from the pain of
the ray.
“Stephen Oreo stood over me. That
proud, handsome face was lighted with
the light from the instruments. The
red hair was like a flame. The blue eyes
glittered with a cold, scornful, mocking
triumph.
“ ‘Say it, pup,’ he would tell me.
Then he would step up the penetration
of the ray again, and tell me, ‘Say it,
pup.’
“I didn’t say it. The scene changed
into a kind of nightmare. My naked
brain, with the skull stripped away, was
sinking slowly in a bottomless ocean of
pulsating red fire. And that careless,
mocking voice was ringing through the
ocean of agony, repeating: “‘Say it,
pup 1’
“Finally the fear came back. I re-
alized my will was weaker than the ray.
“The pain of it was less terrible than
the fear that I should give up.
“But I didn’t. When I woke up it
THE COMETEERS
25
was nearly dawn. They had carried me
out of the laboratory. I was lying out
on the campus, above the beach. A
bandage had been tied around my head.
One of the others must have done that.
“I got up, and tried to walk to the in-
firmary. I fainted on a path. They
found me there ; I woke up again in
bed. It was three weeks before I could
walk again. I told the doctors that I
had been experimenting with the omega-
ray apparatus, and hurt myself acci-
dentally.”
“Bob,” the commander asked gravely,
“why didn’t you report the truth ?
Stephen Oreo would have been punished
and discharged. He would never have
had the opportunity to lead the Jovian
Revolt.”
“It was our quarrel,” Bob Star told
him, grimly. “I meant to finish it — if
I could !
In the midst of the apparatus, in a kind of cradle,
was Stephen Oreo!
26
ASTOUNDING STORIES
“As I lay in bed, coming out of the
delirium of encephalitis, I again resolved
to kill Stephen Oreo — if I could.”
“What do you mean,” asked Jay
Kalam, “if you could?”
“That fear that came back, as I was
going unconscious under the ray, has
never left me,” Bob Star said. “I’ve
never recovered from the effect of the
ray. There’s still a pain, like a little
red hammer, that beats against my brain,
day and night. In nine years, it hasn’t
stopped.”
Bob Star’s face was white, and cold
sweat broke abruptly on his forehead,
and in the palms of his hands.
“I’m afraid, commander,” he whis-
pered hoarsely. “I couldn’t kill Stephen
Oreo! Or any man. I know it, com-
mander !”
He sank back in the chair, pale,
quivering.
“I’m not a coward,” he gasped, “but
— something wouldn’t let me kill a
man!”
VII.
THE TALL COMMANDER of the
legion stood for a time, within the rich-
hued, lustrous pool of a great rug. His
dark eyes studied Bob Star. One lean
finger was scraping at the angle of his
dark jaw.
“I’m glad, Bob,” he said at last, in a
very slow, quiet voice, “that you’ve told
me this. I can understand the way you
feel, for once I felt not much differ-
ently.” His dark eyes closed for a mo-
ment ; and Bob Star saw his face as a
schooled mask of tragic resignation.
“But you can overcome your fear, Bob,
as I did. And you must !
“For as things are now, Bob, it may
be necessary for you to kill Stephen
Oreo.”
“You mean that, commander?” he
cried. “I’d give my life for the chance !”
And he muttered : “But I'm afraid —
afraid I couldn’t!”
Chimes rang softly, then. A door
swung open, to admit once more the
deep, vibrant song of the geodyne gen-
erators that drove the gigantic ship. A
steward entered, in white, pushing a
covered, wheeled table.
“Breakfast,” he announced, saluting,
“for two.”
Jay Kalam silently motioned him to
depart. The door closed again, and it
seemed that the long, ivory-walled room
was in another dimension, remote from
the racing ship.
Jay Kalam ignored the table, as Bob
Star asked, anxiously : “How does it
come that Stephen Oreo is still alive?
I thought that he was executed for
treason, after the revolt.”
“That’s what the system thinks,” said
Jay Kalam. “The true history of the
revolt is known to only a few : your
parents and myself, a few officers of the
legion — and, of course, Stephen Oreo.
I’m going to outline it to you, now, so
that you can understand the very im-
portant duty before you.
“Stephen Oreo himself is a riddle,”
he began, as Bob Star listened intently,
and the unnoticed breakfast cooled on
the covered table. “The legion has spent
a fortune, without learning anything
about his origin.”
“But I remember his parents,” ob-
jected Bob Star. “They visited the
academy. Stephen Oreo invited the
boys to a party they gave. I wasn’t
asked,” he added, wryly, “though all my
friends were.”
“They are foster parents,” said Jay
Kalam, gravely. “His adoptive father,
Edwin Oreo, found him in a peculiar
way. Oreo was a wealthy planter ; he
had extensive holdings through the
asteroids. His home was on Pallas.
“Nearly thirty years ago,” he went
on, “Oreo was cruising in toward Mars
in his space yacht. He and his wife had
been visiting some of their plantations;
THE COMETEERS
27
they were coming to Mars for the sum-
mer season. As it happened, they were
cruising far off the usual space lanes.
“Some forty million miles off Mars,
their navigator caught sight of a bright
object, adrift in space. The meteor
detectors had led to its discovery, but
it was obviously no common meteorite.
Oreo’s curiosity was aroused enough so
that he had the vessel checked.
“The object proved to be a cylinder
of magnelithium alloy, eight feet long.
It had a carefully machined screw cap,
which was sealed at several points with
masses of black wax. Impressed upon
each seal, in scarlet, was a curious
symbol : It was the looped cross — the
crux ansata, which is an ancient symbol
of life — above crossed bones.
“When the cylinder had been ex-
amined, Edwin Oreo wished to have it
brought in through the air lock, and
opened. But his wife objected. The
crossed bones, she said, meant danger.
The shape and dimensions of the object
rather suggested a coffin, and she sug-
gested that it might contain a corpse,
dead of some dreadful contagion.
“BUT Edwin Oreo was a hardy man.
It was not timidity that had won his for-
tune, in the rougher days of the asteroid
belt. And his curiosity was burning.
“In the end, he had the cylinder
dragged into the air lock. Then, when
no member of his crew proved willing
to touch it, he sealed himself into the
chamber with it. He broke the seals,
and unscrewed the cap.
“The walls of the cylinder were heavy,
and carefully insulated. Inside were
tanks of oxygen, water, and liquid food.
There were heaters, air cleaners. In
brief, except for lack of power, the
thing was a miniature space ship.
“In the midst of the apparatus, in a
kind of cradle, was Stephen Oreo.
“A red-haired tot, apparently not a
year old. He was naked, unaccompanied
by any means of identification. Appar-
ently he was never able to tell anything
of his past history. Edwin Oreo ad-
vertised discreetly for information,
offering large rewards, but nothing was
ever forthcoming.
“Stephen Oreo had, as you say, an un-
usual power of fascination. One
glimpse of the child’s wide blue eyes
won Edwin Oreo’s childless wife. The
couple adopted the infant, and gave it
every advantage their wealth could buy,
even to securing the appointment to the
academy.”
“His own brilliance could have won
him that,” Bob Star put in, "in the com-
petitive examinations.”
“Anyhow,” Jay Kalam went on, “he
was graduated, as you know, with
honors, and went into service. He re-
ceived the rapid promotion that his
unusual abilities seemed to merit.
Within four years, he had his own ship.
Two years later he was placed in com-
mand of the Jupiter Patrol.
“The Jovian system, you know,” Jay
Kalam swiftly explained, “was settled
largely by exiled Purples — enemies of
the democratic Green Hall. They were
sent there when the empire was over-
thrown, two centuries ago.”
“I know,” said Bob Star, quietly.
“My own grandfather was born on
Callisto.”
“Within a month after he assumed
command of the Jupiter Patrol,” the tall
commander went on, “we began to re-
ceive ultra-wave dispatches from Ste-
phen Oreo, reporting a new uprising of
the Purples. He always stated that the
situation was well in hand, and re-
quested me not to send reenforcements.
“And for two weeks we did nothing
— until a band of fugitives reached
Ceres in a space yacht with the amazing
information that Stephen Oreo was him-
self the guiding spirit of the revolt, and
28
ASTOUNDING STORIES
that all thq, fighting had been between
him and his allies, and the loyal men
in the patrol. Civilian friends of the
Green Hall had been systematically
murdered.
“I called in every possible legion ship,
from as far away as Mercury and
Pallas, to the legion base on Mars.”
“I recall the day,” said Bob Star,
springing to his feet in remembered im-
patience. “We heard about it, in the
classrooms. I was mad to join the ex-
pedition against Stephen Oreo. But
they wouldn’t let me go.”
“When the fleet was ready, I took
your mother aboard the flagship, from
the Purple Hall,” Jay Kalam went on.
“From what the fugitives had reported
of Stephen Oreo, I thought it might be
necessary for us to call upon AKKA.
“Our flight to the Jovian system was
not opposed. All was quiet until we
approached Callisto. But then a great,
spinning sun of white flame burst up
from the city of Lei, and came hurtling
toward the fleet. It was a vortex of
annihilation. Two cruisers were caught
in the attraction of the terrific etheric
fields that surrounded it, and sucked
into its incandescent core of disinte-
grating atoms.
“We were not completely surprised.
The fugitives had reported that Stephen
Oreo was erecting a new secret weapon,
developed from scientific information
obtained from the Medusae of Yarkand,
when the Purples under Eric Ulnar were
in alliance with them.
“And this weapon, I saw, was similar
to the vortex guns of the Medusae. But
the range and power of it had been
vastly increased, by the genius of
Stephen Oreo. I perceived at once that
this one weapon on Callisto threatened
every planet in the system, with its bolts
of atomic flame.
“YOUR MOTHER, Bob, had al-
ready assembled the little instrument of
AKKA. And, as much as I dislike
wholesale destruction, I asked her then
to wipe out the city of Lei.
“You have seen the instrument, Bob.
And you must know that the working
of it is not spectacular. I was not sur-
prised when your mother operated it,
and nothing appeared to happen. But
she turned to me, with a puzzled,
frightened look on her face, and whis-
pered: “‘It doesn’t work!’
“Startled and dismayed, I looked into
a telescope. One glimpse showed me
that Lei had not been harmed. I was
able to see the vortex gun. It was a
colossal skeleton tube of metal girders,
set on a plateau above the city.
“Even as I looked, another whirling
mass of atomic flame came up out of it.
It caught three more of our ships — and
the whole fleet, at the beginning, had
been only ninety-seven.
“Your mother perceived at once that
we had been defeated.
“ ‘Some one,’ she told me, ‘has come
upon the secret of AKKA. Matter and
energy,’ she explained, ‘are phenomena
of space. AKKA operates by so trans-
forming the warp of space that they
cannot exist. And the only possible
barrier against its operation is a counter
warp in space, created by another master
of AKKA.’
“I made her try again, although she
protested that it was useless.
“ ‘You can’t adjust the weapon,’ I
asked her, ‘to penetrate the interfering
warp ?’
“ ‘No,’ she told me. ‘AKKA oper-
ates upon a simple principle. It utilizes
a singular instability of the universe.
And any master of the principle can
turn the balance the other way, to make
that stability absolute.
“ ‘My weapon,’ she said, ‘will not work
again until that other master of it is
dead — or at least until his instrument
is taken from him, and he is prevented
from getting materials for a new one.’
THE COMETEERS
29
“Retreat was the only course pos-
sible,” the tall commander continued
bleakly. “And we lost six more cruisers
as we fled.
"A triumphant ultra-wave message
from Stephen Oreo followed us. It con-
firmed our assumption that he was the
new master of AKKA. It demanded
that the Green Hall recognize the Jovian
empire, under his dictatorship, as an
independent state.
“The insolent mockery of the message
did not end with that. Stephen Oreo
demanded interplanetary concessions,
apologies from the Green Hall, humili-
ating prerogatives throughout the sys-
tem. He demanded the abolition of the
legion of space.
“It was clear that he aimed at domina-
tion of the entire system.”
JAY KALAM stood rigidly straight
upon the great rug, amid the simple,
warm-toned luxury of that great, silent
room upon the racing Invincible. His
lean jaw was grimly set. His dark eyes
were flashing. And the vibrant ring
coming back into his voice was the echo
of battle.
“We were defeated,” he said. “But
not vanquished. The legion of space
has never been vanquished. Remember
that, Bob !”
“Yes, sir,” breathed Bob Star, in-
stinctively saluting.
“With the Purple Hall, Bob,” Jay
Kalam resumed, “your father had in-
herited the records of the first Yarkand
expedition. They had been discovered
among the private documents of the
traitor, Adam Ulnar. From the infor-
mation in those records, scanty and in-
accurate as it was, we set out to dupli-
cate the great vortex gun that Stephen
Oreo had set up on Callisto.
“The work of many men went into it.
Your father made a brilliant contribu-
tion. I did what I was able. But it was
your mother, Bob — perhaps because of
her knowledge of AKKA — who first
saw the outlines of the basic problem of
insuring the stability and control of the
vortex, and suggested a solution.
“It is enough to say that we built, and
set up on Ceres, a vortex gun fully
equal to the one at Lei. The Invincible
he remarked, “now carries one of greater
power, but that first one was too clumsy
and bulky to be mounted on any ship.
“Meanwhile, Stephen Oreo had been
busy organizing his new empire and pre-
paring for further conquests, without
haste, believing us completely at his
mercy. The successful erection of the
great vortex gun on Ceres — and it ranks
among the supreme achievements of the
legion, Bob — was a complete surprise.
“A surprise that defeated him.
“Neither weapon could destroy the
other, for each could deflect approaching
vortices to a harmless distance. Stephen
Oreo’s weapon was powerful enough,
given time, to desolate every planet
in the entire system — one atomic vortex
shot from Callisto reduced ten thousand
square miles of Mercury to smoking
lava.
“But our weapon was equally power-
ful. And it was a simpler task to blot
life from the moons of Jupiter than
from the rest of the system. We should
have finished first.
“Stephen Oreo, as you say, Bob, is
a remarkably brilliant man. He saw at
once that he was defeated. He was too
intelligent to carry on a clearly hopeless
battle. He immediately offered to sur-
render, when our first shot fell on
Callisto.
“He demanded, however, that we
guarantee his life. He required the per-
sonal word of every member of the
Green Hall, and of myself, for the
legion, that we would protect his life
at every cost. He made an odd excep-
tion, however, with regard to you,
Bob.”
Bob Star leaned forward, to ask in %
30
ASTOUNDING STORIES
strained voice: “What was that, com-
mander ?”
“I think I recall his exact words,’’ said
Jay Kalam. “He said : ‘Leave out
Robert Star. He and I already have an
engagement regarding my life. And if
the young pup has the guts to kill me,
let him do it.’ ”
That challenge jerked Bob Star for-
ward. He was trembling. His lean
jaws set, and his nails dug into his
palms. The ragged scar upon his fore-
head went deathly white.
“I will !” he muttered grimly. “I
will!” Then his mouth fell a little open,
and he sank back into his chair, weakly
mopping the sweat from his forehead.
“But I couldn’t kill him, commander,”
he whispered. “I couldn’t, if I tried!
Something — there’s just something that
wouldn’t let me.”
“You will overcome that fear, Bob,”
said Jay Kalam, gravely. “You must.”
For a moment he was silent, his thin,
ascetic lips firmly set. “The word of
an officer in the legion has seldom been
broken,” he said at last. “Mine will
not be broken.
“I am not going to kill Stephen Oreo,
Bob. I am not going to allow any other
man in the legion to kill him. But since
Stephen Oreo made that mocking ex-
ception in your case, it is necessary for
us to take advantage of it.
“UNDERSTAND, Bob, I do not
command you to kill Stephen Oreo.
But I am going to leave you with his
guard, with authority independent of
the officers there, to take any action
you see fit. I should dislike very muck
to see any man of Stephen Oreo's ability
needlessly killed.
“My only command is, do not let him
escape.”
Bob Star swallowed, and gulped
hoarsely : “Yes, commander.”
His arm made a jerky salute.
“It is unfortunate that we had to
promise the life of Stephen Oreo,” Jay
Kalam added. “Your father, Bob, was
opposed to making the promise. He
pointed out that Stephen Oreo’s very
life was a continual menace to the
system, that at any time, with a few
minutes of liberty, he could make
AKKA useless once more. Enemies of
the system, your father said, would try
endlessly to set him free. And his un-
canny genius would make him a deadly
danger, in any dungeon.
“But if his terms had not been ac-
cepted, the resulting war would have
cost half the human lives in the system.
Even your father at last agreed that
we could not pay billions of lives, for
his.
“And Stephen Oreo became our
prisoner — the most dangerous prisoner
that locks ever held.”
Bob Star was staring up out of the
big chair, with his lean face set and pale.
“So Stephen Oreo is still alive?” his
bloodless lips formed an almost sound-
less whisper. “And he’s in prison?
And he knows the secret of my mother’s
weapon ?”
“He has been guarded as well as the
legion could guard him,” Jay Kalam was
saying. “We announced that he had
been condemned and executed for his
treason — as he so well deserved to be.
And in a secret place, the legion built
the strongest fortress that our engi-
neers could devise. Stephen Oreo is held
there, under another name. He is dead
to the world outside. He is permitted
no communication — not even with the
members of his guard.
“To all but a few, he is dead,” the
commander said slowly. “But the in-
visible raiders from the comet have the
secret.”
“Eh?” exclaimed Bob Star, startled
by those calm words. Stiff with numb-
ing dismay, his fingers clutohed at the
arms of his chair. “How is that?”
“That’s the reason, Bob, for our
THE COMETEERS
31
alarm. That’s why your father was so
set upon, the destruction of the comet.
You see, we kept certain information
about Stephen Oreo, including the loca-
tion of the prison, in a vault at the main
legion base on Earth.
“We believed the vault impregnable.
Your old guardian, Giles Habibula,
helped design the elaborate system of
locks. They were the best in the system.
The vault was always guarded by trusted
men.
“But the invisible beings from the
comet slipped past the outer defenses of
the base. They approached the vault,
undetected. They killed four guards —
hideously. They entered the vault —
which Giles Habibula had said was
impossible. They carried off the docu-
ments relating to Stephen Oreo.”
Bob Star's lean face was grimly bleak.
“If the Cometeers set him free,” his
dry throat rasped, “he will join them
gladly. He has no loyalty to mankind.
He would be eager to fight the system,
to avenge his imprisonment.”
“It is hard to believe that of a human
being,” said Jay Kalam.
“But I know it,” said Bob Star, with
savage emphasis. “He is a man without
humanity.” His voice grew faint with
dread as he added : “And when he is
free, my mother's weapon will be use-
less. We shall be defenseless against the
science that moves the comet !”
"Still,” interposed Jay Kalam gravely,
“I believe that beings so far advanced
as the Cometeers must be, must have de-
veloped such high qualities as mercy,
magnanimity, and tolerance.
“SOON,” he added, "I shall know.
After we leave you at Stephen Oreo’s
prison, the Invincible will drive straight
for the comet. Within five days we
shall be welcomed as friends — or
destroyed.
“For I don’t doubt that the Com-
eteers are capable of destroying the
Inzdncible, Bob. I am simply staking
the ship, and our lives, that the Com-
eteers will reciprocate a gesture of
friendship.
“In a few hours, now, the Invincible
will stop to leave you at Stephen Oreo’s
prison, Bob. I don’t command you to
kill him. But don't let him escape. For
if I lose, Bob — if the Cometeers prove
to be enemies — His escape will mean
the doom of the system.”
Bob Star was a quivering heap, in the
big chair. His thin face was a drawn
mask of agony, and the ragged scar was
lividly white. His tortured eyes stared
at Jay Kalam, mutely pleading.
“I’ll try,” he whispered miserably.
“But I’m afraid — afraid I can’t !”
To be Continued. ■
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Red Storm on Jupiter
A story of storm-lashed wastelands
on the biggest planet of the galaxy
T HE Law Garrison Commander’s
anger flamed and soared.
Brighter than the bright Jovian
satellites was that anger, with smoky
undercurrents of resentment that smol-
dered like the Lake of Black Light. The
commander was a little man, wiry and
narrow-shouldered, but the energy that
flowed from him was like an engulfing
nova, shriveling the self-esteem of
Evart Harnden till the tired American
sagged in despair before the com-
mander’s circular chair.
“You say you were half frozen,”
roared the commander. “A pitiful ex-
cuse. The Foam Station Smasher was
as cold as you. He had smashed two
stations on the Jeel and was retiring
with heavy spoils. You were unen-
cumbered, armed with a neon rifle.”
“My right foot was gangrening,” pro-
tested Harnden. “I thought that by
summoning help ”
“Stow the excuses, Harnden,” rasped
the commander. “What a Law Garri-
son Scout needs is guts, not thoughts.”
Harnden’s weather-bronzed face
paled in the green glow of cold-light
lamps under a dome that arched above
him with as much friendliness as the
dimly remembered skies of Earth. It
was even studded with fhe familiar con-
stellations Canis Major and his master,
mighty Orion ; Pegasus ; and the bright,
variable star Algol, whom the Arabs
called A1 Ghul, the demon slayer; there
was the Great Dipper, too, and Cassio-
peia gleaming gloriously.
But far beyond those stars were
immense island universes stretching to
the rim of space, glowing against un-
fathomable night and chaos. But be-
yond the constellations in the dome,
dark clouds swirled. Clouds stifling
and oppressive, composed of gases in
turbulent flux that drained all the
orange-and-red light from sunlight and
cast a greenish aura, a sickly corpse light
on the habitations of men.
The familiar constellations were, of
course, not real at all. But the Earth-
man exiles on immense and frigid
Jupiter, pursuing grim tasks five hun-
dred million miles from the solar disk
had yearned for the friendly visual
“feel” of the ancient and familiar
clusters — Sextans and Ursa Major,
Bootes, Hercules and the Serpent, the
diffuse, wavering glory of the Great
Nebula.
In the four administrative domes in
the settlement of Algeia, in the bright
equatorial zone, projection planetariums
had been erected to create an illusion of
friendly skies under an atmospheric
canopy that seethed and raged with a
fury alien to Earth. High above the
greenly glowing domes, storm-lashed
clouds scudded across the sky before the
awful drive of thousand-mile winds and
blasts of carbonic-acid gas more lethal
to human life than the poisonous fumes
of the fire fungi in the south tropical
zones, or the corrosive spores which
filled the deserts of the fifth satellite
and brought death on swift wings to
man and beast.
But within the great dome shone the
familiar stars. The huge planetarium
projector, looking like some metal-
sheathed monster from beyond the stars,
cast thousands of bright points on a
AST— 2
by Frank Belknap Long, Jr.
Hamden’s eyes widened — then mighty energies were
released within him.
AST— 3
34
ASTOUNDING STORIES
curving vault of frosted silver, etching
patterns of splendor for the weary, toil-
worn exiles from Earth.
Beneath the clicking, swaying blue
metal projection instrument Harnden
and the commander seemed pitifully in-
consequential, tiny even. Harnden
stood with tight lips, gazing in despair
into the wrath-convulsed face of the
commander. The commander was a
colonist of Venus and a product of her
Spartan-tempered thought academies, a
rigorous disciplinarian whose immense
respect for institutions and the law
blinded him to the complexities of
human psychology. He had no patience
with any weakness, physical or mental.
Even errors of judgment infuriated him.
“You are suspended for one year,
Harnden,” he said. “For one year more
competent men will enforce law and
order on the Jeel. During that period
your salary will naturally cease. Have
you anything set aside for living ex-
penses?”
Harnden smiled bitterly. “No, sir, I
haven’t. The Law Garrison usually re-
wards loyalty with a pension. Some-
times I think men are quite mad to serve
abstractions like justice and order.
There are warmer, more human loyalties
on Earth. The guardians of abstrac-
tions are not human at all.”
The commander’s face purpled with
wrath. He half rose from his huge
metal chair beneath the shadow of the
droning and clicking star projector.
“Stow that, Harnden. The Foam
Station Smasher is a menace to all the
mining outposts, a ghastly menace. You
had a chance to blast him and muffed it.”
“I merely climbed back into the Jeel
cruiser to signal for reserves,” pro-
tested Hamden. “With my gangrened
foot I knew that he would blast me be-
fore I could align the neon rifle.
Luckily, I saw him first.”
DESPITE his bitterness, a trace of
humor crept into his eyes. “When I re-
emerged from the cruiser he saw me.
He started to draw a bead on me with
a flame tube, but when he saw that I
was crippled he just turned around and
walked away. Naturally, I couldn’t
blast him then.”
Curiosity flamed for an instant in the
commander’s eyes.
“Was the Foam Station functioning
all this time?”
Hamden nodded. “He was getting
ready to smash it when I climbed out of
the cruiser for the second time. When
he saw my leg he decided not to smash
it in my presence. He walked back to
his own cruiser and shut the port. It
was a courtesy gesture. He knew that
I was going to leave.”
The commander swore vehemently.
Why, the whole thing was utterly in-
sane. A law scout deliberately flying
off and letting a dangerous criminal
wreak his will upon property worth a
fortune — a scout sworn to defend and
protect colonization rights throughout
all the explored zones, especially in the
Jeel.
“You let a malignant killer escape
just to satisfy some crazy, irrational
code of your own,” exclaimed the com-
mander furiously. “Why didn’t you go
a step further and compliment him on
his achievements ?”
“You cannot align a neon rifle swiftly
unless you bring your foot to bear on
the pedal,” said Hamden, with grim
patience. “He had me covered. He
could have blasted me before I was in a
position to impress him with theories
of law and order. He may be a killer,
but he is also a man of honor.”
“A quixotic, mad code,” muttered the
commander. But now a certain faint
admiration seemed to temper his anger.
"Tell me, what will you do for a living?
Will you go out into the Jeel?”
Harnden nodded. “It is the only
thing I am fitted for,” he said. “I know
the Jeel. The life of a Jeel miner is
brief, three months perhaps. But if I
35
RED STORM ON JUPITER
strike a rich vein before the radium gets
into my bones I will purchase passage
back to Earth. I haven’t seen Earth
since I was knee high to a grasshopper.
I’ll stay there a couple of months and
come back on the new Trans-Saturnian
transport, Everest, which is scheduled to
leave Earth in the spring of 2002.”
“And report for reassignment?” asked
the commander.
Hamden nodded.
The commissioner rose slowly. Re-
sentment still flushed his cheeks and
smoldered in his gaze. But, paradoxi-
cally, deliberately, he extended his hand.
“Officially your conduct merits the
severest censure,” he said. “But— oh
well, good luck to you on the Jeel.”
HARNDEN wondered if he was
going mad. Above him immense red
clouds billowed and changed shape be-
fore the impact of winds that ripped and
tore at their ragged edges. Raging with
the fury of freak gales in the Earth’s
upper atmosphere, they divided the gas-
eous envelope of mighty Jupiter into
banners of lurid flame, into crescents
and swirling spirals of scarlet.
Some of the stupendous, pulsing
bands were the deep-red color of freshly
turned loam, some as black as clotted
blood. Others verged toward the red
at the extremity of the visible spectrum,
wavered for a moment in tenuous pulsa-
tions and vanished into a vast vortex of
infra-light. A few showed iridescent
and rainbow-hued, a few blinding-green
— flashes of brilliant alien color in the
all-engulfing ocean of radiance.
For thirty thousand miles this im-
mense and seething caldron of heavy
gases and lacerated clouds rotated at
variance with the planet’s crust, slowed
in some areas by vertical convections
and in others by fierce horizontal pres-
sure drifts of inconstant magnitude.
Far back in the early twentieth con-
tury the astronomers of Earth had
called this raging scarlet ellipsoid the
Great Red Spot. Its amazing instability
had baffled the wisest of terrestrial
scientists until the first of the trans-
Satumian space transports had pene-
trated the atmospheric blanket of the
enshrouded planet and discovered the
curious nature of the soil beneath.
Although Jupiter was utterly without
internal heat its crust was strangely
elastic, almost fluid in texture. The
mass of the majestic planet was concen-
trated heavily toward its center, but
there was extreme variability in the soft-
ness of its outer crust. In some of the
belts and zones the surface was a kind
of jellified sea which heaved turbulently
when the great cyclones which often
raged for months at a time ripped and
tore at it.
Beneath the Great Red Spot the crust
was a turgid, slowly streaming mass of
magnetically energized emulsion. This
vast region, known as the Jeel, exerted
an intense magnetic attraction toward
the chemical constituents in the Jovian
atmosphere which absorbed sunlight in
orange and red. But the precise nature
of these constituents, and of the heavy,
emulsive substance which formed the
crust eluded the researches of all the
chemists of Venus, Mercury and Earth.
The alien emulsion contained elements
which evaporated slowly in bright sun-
light, and a body of molecules which
flew apart and became highly volatile
gases when exposed to temperatures a
little in excess of the radiating layers in
the planet’s atmosphere.
On the storm-lashed, desolate Jeel,
fifty thousand miles from the Jovian
outposts of his kind, Harnden lifted his
eyes and gazed upward at the blinding,
scarlet conflux that filled all space above
him.
Nearly four hundred million miles
away his midget homeland turned : warm
blue seas and green fields; treetops that
bent in the brief gales of April ; silver
larks a-winging; and in cool, deep
woods, quiet pools and rest after toil;
36
ASTOUNDING STORIES
white and rose-colored daisies in country
lanes; and the solace of dear, familiar
faces ; the horns of elfland faintly blow-
ing — nearly four hundred million miles
away across black gulfs of space.
On the Jeel, the desolation closed
about him like a wet shroud, fdling him
with loneliness and terror, wrapping his
brain in vapors. The storm which was
raging above him was the worst in his
experience. He was not even sure that
the Foam Station would remain stable
and afloat, that his small cruiser could
outride the tempest.
Outside the quiet circle of streaming
liquescence on which he stood in his
cumbersome oxygen suit, the raging at-
mosphere piled the surface of the Jeel
into vast waves that broke and curled
in creaming menace hundreds of feet
above his head. All about that small,
artificial sanctuary was tumult and chaos.
THE little space cruiser floated
serenely in sluggishly moving currents.
The circle of serenity was two hundred
feet in diameter. In its gleaming center
the immense shining bulk of the Foam
Station towered beneath red, ragged
clouds. From the continuously re-
volving sprayer at the station’s summit
a pale, silvery vapor descended.
Falling on the emulsive surface it
spread out in swiftly widening circles.
The circles stilled the little waves that
were constantly arising within the area
of quiescence. Harden knew that if the
sprayer mechanism jammed for a, single
instant, or if the raging storm above car-
ried away the summit of the station the
little waves would increase in height and
bulk, would swiftly grow to giant
dimensions. Only the descending'silvery
vapor stilled the waves as they sought
communion in a seething maelstrom.
Potentially the maelstrom was there,
crouching like an irate, bottled jinni
under the turgid surface of the gale-
encircled sanctuary.
As the sprayed fluid spread, the long,
furious tongues of the gale licked in
vain at the protected surface. The wind
could get no grip on the liquid. From
the spreading silver circles it was re-
pulsed with a long-drawn, soughing sigh
that was the only reassuring sound in all
that red inferno.
The mechanical principles underlying
that continuous repulsion were as ef-
fective as they were simple. The upper
surface of the sprayed fluid was formed
of the inert ends of long-chain mole-
cules. As it spread over the unstable
Jovian “crust” it presented a surface as
polished as a mirror. When the gaseous
tongues of the gale whipped across that
surface they recoiled as the fierce winds
of Earth recoil from oil film on water.
The Foam Station Sprayer stilled the
Jovian currents and repulsed the air
that sought to whip them into huge
waves.
The Foam Sprayers were mining in-
novations. All the ingenuity and re-
sourcefulness of the outpost engineers
had been marshaled by the Jupiter
Radium Mining Syndicate to assist in
the erection and distribution of the great
towers over ten thousand miles of the
Jovian Jeel.
Enormous atmosphere transports had '
carried them to radium-rich veins under
the red heavens, and intrepid Earthman
— dredgers and miners — had operated
them in ghastly loneliness of spirit in a
world where human beings moved with
the slowness of exhaustion, incased in
protective suits that weighed two hun-
dred pounds, and wearing upon their
feet immense shoes that mushroomed on
the surface that was neither liquid nor
solid, but an amalgam alien to Earth.
Miners and dredgers. Both terms
were in a sense misnomers. The slug-
gish, heavy tides of the Jeel’s crust
solidified in spots to a consistency that
merited the adjective “solid,” and it was
in such curdled areas that the radium
deposits clustered like glowworms about
a central matrix whose every pulse was
RED STORM ON JUPITER
37
worth a fortune in gold and diamonds.
But even in the liquid areas the de-
posits were numerous, and the search
for them profitable. But whether a man
who warred with death for profit on the
Jeel was a miner or a dredger was a
problem which Harnden had left un-
solved, contenting. himself with varying
his modus opermuli when the need
arose.
He wondered if he was going mad.
Looking at the roaring crimson gases
and the lashed clouds he felt suddenly
as though the skies were about to de-
scend and engulf him, as though the
stupendous, and lurid heavens would no
longer tolerate an intruder as terribly
lost, and frightened and insignificant as
himself.
He was a speck of throbbing life, a
blob of consciousness and alien matter
on a world so big that even immense
Saturn and majestic Uranus seemed
entirely dwarfed by its mere presence
in the solar family; while its numerous
moons, which approximated planets in
size, looked like tiny fly specks in the
firmament above it.
He had been dredging continuously
for three hours. In a non-conductive
belt which encircled his massive oxygen
suit the garnering of his day’s toil
emitted radioactive emanations capable
of destroying life on all the Jovian out-
posts, actinic rays more deadly than the
most lethal salts and corrosive acids. On
Earth radium was the rarest of known
elements and had to be patiently isolated
from tons of uranium residues. But
on Jupiter radium existed in a free state
in the turgid, semiliquid crust area.
Hamden’s nerves shrieked warnings,
protested that it was time to quit. The
brief, ten-hour Jovian day was drawing
to a close amidst such a plethora of
brightness that it seemed to be just be-
ginning. Harnden turned slowly about
on his huge flattened shoes, and moved
toward the little atmosphere transport
which floated in the shadow of the
Foam Station a few feet from where he
was standing.
The turgid substance beneath him was
unimaginably queer. The immense sur-
faces of Hamden’s shoes plopped
across it, sinking through the spreading
scum from the sprayer, but making only
slight depressions, which immediately
filled, in the basic substance of the Jeel.
By ultimate analysis, it was perhaps
more solid than liquid. But it was
sufficiently liquid to rear into huge
waves, cones and pinnacles of seething
menace when the sprayer ceased to
function.
WITHIN the little space transport
which had brought Harnden to the Foam
Station across five thousand miles of
storm-whipped Jeel, through billowing
masses of cloud as red as the heart of
a ruby, there were replenishments which
his body craved, solaces for his jangled
and tormented nerves. Food and water,
peace after toil, the illusion of security
— security and perfect quiet.
He would remove his hideously heavy
space suit, strip to the buff, refresh him-
self with a cool shower from the sprayer
in the air-conditioned relaxation cham-
ber in the stem of the vessel. He would
drink at least a quart of water, sink his
teeth into ripe and luscious fruit. He
would don a lounge suit, slippers. He
would light his friendliest pipe. He
would tune in on the televisual broad-
cast from Alpha City the largest of the
Jovian outposts.
He would forget the red storm com-
pletely, the horrible menace of splitting
clouds and gases that uplifted in awful
rage like beasts of the Apocalypse. He
would spew the images from his mind,
relax, forget. The air-lock portal of the
little transport glimmered with a bright-
ness as of splintered mica a few feet
from the quartz eyes of his cylindrical
helmet. A deep feeling of relief was
sweeping over him when a tubular,
high-altitude transport whirled with
38
ASTOUNDING STORIES
appalling suddenness through rifts in
the red inferno above, and swooped
down upon the gale-lashed Foam Sta-
tion.
In sudden alarm Hamden jerked his
head backward. As the long cylinder
at the summit of his oxygen suit slanted,
a cold-blue searchlight from the descend-
ing atmosphere cruiser broke over it in
shimmering waves. Hamden’s eyes
widened behind the quartz as the blind-
ing light swept over him ; his jaw sagged.
Then mighty energies were released
within him.
The Foam Station Smasher traveled
in a high-altitude cruiser and discredi-
tably descended like a bolt from the red.
With fiendish and irrational malice he
swooped down upon the Foam Stations,
splitting them with detonation bombs
into glowing fragments. Harnden knew
himself to be standing in the shadow of
oblivion and a monstrous death.
Down upon the raging Jeel in swift
loops, the menacing ship descended.
Bristling with rugged armaments ; its
tapering rocket ejectors belching smoke
and flame, its aerial torpedo and bomb
tubes yawning ominously in its corru-
gated stem, it circled twice about the
summit of the Foam Sprayer and hov-
ered for an instant directly over the little
grotesquely incased figure on the slowly
streaming crust beneath.
Then it descended. With a deafening
roar it jerked sideways until it was clear
of Hamden’s little ship and settled down
on the unstable Jeel. The great circular
searchlight that projected from its bow
dimmed, went dark. The interior throb-
bing diminished in volume and intensity
until the great bulk rested without vibra-
tions on the turgid circle covered by the
silvery spray of the slowly revolving
Foam Station. The semiliquid crust
bubbled a little beneath its enormous
weight and the heat which emanated
from its basal plates. A crackling filled
the air as the huge plates cooled.
Hamden didn’t w'ait for the air lock
to open. His blast pistol was no longer
in its customary berth beneath his right
arm. His thin gloved fingers curled
about the firing lever of the heavy little
weapon as he advanced upon the trans-
port. No cumbersome neon gun requir-
ing knee pedaling would defeat justice
this time.
He was grimly cool. He knew that
the Foam Station Smasher would blast
as soon as the port opened. He was
grimly determined to blast first. He
was trembling a little, but not in fright.
Killing could never be a casual matter
to him, not even when he blasted in the
line of duty. And the Foam Station
Smasher was not as inhuman and merci-
less as the sanguinary bandits who slew
agents of the company about the rim of
the Black Lake in the south equatorial
belt, or the vile harpies who waylaid the
immense transports from Venus and
Mars and set them adrift in etheric vor-
tices between the chartered spaceways.
ABOUT the circular rim of the air-
lock port a thin ribbon of light glowed.
Hamden’s fingers tightened about the
firing lever and his face hardened.
Slowly the portal opened on a world that
seemed a-gleam with blood. Limned
in the light-encircled aperture Harnden
saw a small, cumbersomely clad form
that wavered. The Foam Station
Smasher ’vas six feet tall, broad of
shoulder. This little form could not
be
Abruptly the form fell forward with
extended amis, collapsed in a headlong
sprawl on the turgid Jeel. For one brief
instant Harnden remained immobile;
his body tensed in cautious suspicion.
Then he thrust his blast pistol back into
its holster, clumped toward the prostrate
form.
His immense shoes left phantasmal
tracks of vivid red, tracks that quickly
vanished as he moved across the slug-
gishly streaming, diluent crust. The
fallen figure stirred a little ; its gleaming
RED STORM ON JUPITER
39
oxygen helmet wavered slowly at it at-
tempted feebly to rise. Hamden’s
strenuous breathing had clouded the
quartz window of his own helmet. He
saw the little form through a nebulous
haze as he bent above it.
His gloved hands went beneath trem-
bling shoulders, and lifted upward a
body that seemed to protest a little.
Whoever was within that gleaming cari-
cature suit was darned plucky, at any
rate. Wanted to walk all by himself
over a surface as unstable and slippery
as the jellied estuaries of the Black
Lake, to walk without Jeel shoes.
A terrible danger in that, if the poor,
deluded fool had but known. Without
Jeel shoes a man would be mired. He
would sink in up to his knees, his waist.
And, more awful to contemplate, his
feet might touch a radium deposit.
Radium could only be handled with pro-
tective gloves.
Harnden tightened his grip on the
feebly protesting stranger. Luckily, he
was frail and weak. It was shameful
that the company should have sent such
a fragile individual out into the storm-
lashed Jeel. Official callousness, brutal-
ity. Damn all officials anyway. Damn
the insane cupidity that sent men to risk
their necks under heavens like these.
Being weak, the little figure offered
no dangerous resistance. Harnden sup-
ported him to the port of his little space
transport, held him in a tight, protec-
tive grip while he manipulated the air
locks. Light appeared about the rim
of the port ; slowly it opened on the
raging Jeel.
Harnden dragged the figure relent-
lessly within the vessel, swung back the
lever which closed the port. The air
locks functioned with a low, vibrant
humming. Within, cold light lamps
emitted a greenish radiance. The basal
reception chamber beyond the air locks
was small and low-ceilinged. A mush-
room-shaped mass of metal usurped the
central section of the little cubicle. This
mass comprised the lowermost unit or
segment of a huge stabilizing shaft
which ran from the base to the summit
of the vessel. About its margin the
metal mushroom was studded with cir-
cular depressions sufficiently spacious to
accommodate sitting figures.
Harnden lifted the small form into
one of these indented seats and hastily
attacked the bolts of the cylindrical oxy-
gen helmet. He was conscious of a
certain friendliness emanating from the
person within the immense suit. The
eyes that stared out at him were cer-
tainly friendly. They stared at him with
an intensity that was somehow dis-
turbing.
WITH a wrench he lifted the helmet
from shoulders. Instantly the little
chamber was transformed by the emer-
gence of a glory which stunned him. It
was as though the red heavens of the
Jeel had opened and flooded the desolate
Jovian world with a radiant and celestial
loveliness.
Her hair was as vividly red as the
storm-lashed clouds without. Her eyes
were bewitching blue pools radiating
sympathy, warmth and sweetness. Her
mouth was perhaps a trifle too firm-
lipped, but Harnden thought it was the
most beautiful mouth he had ever seen.
The great beauty which emanated from
her soothed the weariness of his mind
and heart, brought healing, and won-
drous solace.
He stood for an instant staring at her
in incredulous awe, scarcely daring to
breathe.
“Don’t look so startled,’’ she ex-
claimed, smiling. “You’d think I was
the only woman on the Jeel. Some of
you can go it alone, but — well, some
of you just can’t. One fourth of the
company’s men are married. The lone-
liness is pretty awful, you know.’’
ASTOUNDING STORIES
40
“Then you’re a wife of — one of the
miners?” stammered Harnden.
The girl shook her head. Her eyes
clouded. “My brother operated a Foam
Station on the Jeel for two years. When
he died I asked to be sent out in his
place. I am ” She checked herself.
“I was the only operator of my sex on
the Jeel.”
"Good Lord !” exclaimed Harnden.
“Don’t look so startled. It isn’t such
physically exhausting work. It’s the
terrible loneliness that makes you want
to crawl into a corner and die. Some-
times I think women can stand the
mental gaff better than men. We’re
weaker physically, but more resistant in
the long run.”
“I’d like to choke the company man
who sent you out here,” muttered Harn-
den. “The Jeel is no place for women,
married or single.”
“I stood it pretty well,” she affirmed.
“I mined so much radium in six months
that the commission would have made
me rich for life.”
“What do you want to be rich for?”
demanded Harnden. “With your looks
you could marry the president of the
Trans-Saturnian.”
“I don’t think I’d like that,” said the
girl, a little angrily. “I’ve always been
independent and ”
“I know, but look what it’s got you.
That blasted storm has blown your Foam
Station off the planet. You’d be with
it if the company hadn’t let you have
a big armored cruiser instead of a little
scallop shell. I don’t know why they
let you have the cruiser. They’ve only
got a couple of ships capable of outrid-
ing this storm.”
The girl’s lips curled in ironic mirth.
"A man would jump to conclusions as
crazy as that. Why didn’t you ask me?
The storm didn’t blow the station down
and I didn't have a cruiser. The Foam
Station Smasher had the cruiser. Now
I’ve got the cruiser and he’s got the little
scallop shell.”
Hamden’s jaw fell open. The aston-
ishment that leaped into his eyes spread
outward till it ingulfed his features.
She felt a little sorry for him then.
She said: “I didn’t mean to shock you
like that. But you made me angry. The
Foam Station Smasher didn’t know, at
first, that I was a girl. I was inside my
little transport eating lunch when he
swooped down out of the sky. I heard
the whine of his cruiser through the
gravity ports.”
HARNDEN recovered slowly from
his amazement. Her words had the ring
of truth, but somehow this thing was
incredible. This slim frail little girl,
a mere child, had somehow captured the
great armored cruiser of the Foam
Station Smasher, had piloted it through
the worst storm that had ever lashed
the company’s scattered stations.
“He dropped a detonater on the foam
sprayer,” she said. “It was blasted
to glowing fragments. The cohcussion
shook the Jeel ; threw me across the
chamber of my — my little scallop shell.
I smashed into a corner ; the table over-
turned, and smashed down on top of me,
spilling eggs, milk and honey all over my
lounge smock.
“I thought, of course, that the storm
had tom the sprayer from its moorings.
The whine of the cruiser I attributed to
the gale. I got unsteadily to my feet
and descended by the ladder from the
central chamber to the air-lock chamber,
dragged my oxygen suit from the locker.
“I should have ascended from the
central chamber to the pilot chamber
and blasted out the propulsion jets.
Company’s orders, you know. If the
sprayer goes, everything goes. The
little waves rise into mountains, as you
know. They tell us to explode rockets
when that happens, get away before
we’re swamped.”
RED STORM ON JUPITER
41
“Yes,” said Harnden. “But a woman
wouldn’t.”
“I never got into a worse tangle with
my suit. I couldn’t seem to get in or
out of it. I was still struggling with it
when I heard the air locks begin to sing.
You know how they sing a minute be-
fore they begin to drone.
“I stopped trying to get into the suit.
My heart began a furious pounding. I
knew that some one was working the air
locks from the outside.
“He came in with his helmet on and
a neon gun in his hand. He was
massive, six feet four or five. He kept
the neon gun leveled all the time he was
in the chamber. I could see his eyes
clearly behind the quartz in his helmet.
They bored into mine.
“The surprise in them showed
through the quartz. The fact that I was
a woman seemed to disturb him beyond
reason. I saw the surprise slowly
change to something else. Something
ugly, terrible. To a certain sort of
woman it wouldn’t have seemed terrible,
but to me ”
“I understand,” said Hamden.
“I was so frightened I couldn’t
move.”
Harnden looked at her steadily. He
wondered just how frightened she had
been. She was a cool one, that child,
more self-possessed than most men.
She had beauty and she had brains. The
combination was usually a dead one.
“I didn’t move,” she resumed. “How
long I stood there staring I do not know.
I could see that he wanted to speak to
me. He started unscrewing his helmet.”
“You were both in ghastly danger,”
said Harnden. “When the Foam
Sprayer goes the waves usually rise
within ten or fifteen minutes. That he
should have risked removing his helmet
seems incredible.”
“It was sheer lunacy,” said the girl.
“He should have forced me to surrender
all the radium I had mined, should have
smashed all the dials in the pilot cham-
ber. They say he is a killer, ruthless.
He should have returned swiftly with
his spoils to his own cruiser. But he
didn’t. He didn’t at all. He took off
his helmet, and — and swept me into his
arms. He kissed me.”
An angry flush suffused the girl’s
cheeks. She bit her nether lip as she
recalled the indignity.
“As soon as he set me down I backed
away from him until I collided with a
heavy jeel pick which was resting
against the base of the central shaft. I
kept all of my mining paraphernalia in
the air-lock chamber. As soon as my
right hand touched the cold metal I
knew I was going to win the grim game
we both were playing.
“I didn’t hit him with the end of the
pick. I simply seized the end of the
pick and hit him with the heavy, blunt
handle. I didn’t want to kill him, but
I hit him hard.
“I hit him on the head. He went
down like a lodestone. I hit him so sud-
denly he didn’t even know he’d been hit.
One minute he was looking at me and
the next he was lying on the floor at my
feet.
“I lost my head completely then. I
knew I had to get out of my little scal-
lop shell and into the Foam Station
Smasher’s big cruiser. I had enough
presence of mind left to put on my hel-
met and clamp the fastenings into place.
I knew that the little transport would
never outride the storm, but I might
have a chance if I could cross the Foam
Station circle to the big one, before the
Jeel heaved up. But I was so frightened
and hysterical I forgot my Jeel shoes.
I crossed from my ship to the big ship
without them. Twice I sank in up to
my knees, floundered. It was a ghastly
experience."
Hamden stared at her admiringly.
“Call it a miracle,” he said.
42
ASTOUNDING STORIES
“I only weigh ninety-seven pounds,”
said the girl “A man your size with-
out shoes would have left his bones to
whiten in the Jeel. But my lack of
poundage didn’t help when I got inside
the Foam Station Smasher’s cruiser, and
tried to turn the wheel of the gravity
neutralizer. It was a terribly big wheel.”
“But you were up to it eventually,”
said Harnden. “Otherwise you wouldn’t
be here at all. Good girl.”
She smiled. “I do deserve a little
praise,” she said. “And sympathy.
Bushel baskets of sympathy. You see,
flying isn’t my specialty. I’ve piloted
several little scallop shells into the red,
but never a big armored cruiser. I
went up dangerously high — fifty thou-
sand feet. The sky looked like a huge,
bleeding wound. I cried. I slapped my
face to keep awake. I cried like a little
girl-”
“Luckily this station was still func-
tioning,” said Harnden. “There’s only
Joe Maalen’s station between here and
Alpha Gty. You’d never have made
Alpha City in this gale. Perhaps my
station will be ripped to shreds. I don’t
know. If the sprayer goes we’ll try to
get to Maalen’s station in the cruiser.”
THE GIRL’S FACE was only a few
inches from his. He thought of the
Foam Station Smasher, of the black-
guard’s insufferable audacity. Her blue
eyes were warm, terribly friendly. He
wondered if a swift, sudden kiss would
be so violently resented.
"You haven’t told me your name,” he
said. “What is your name?”
“Wileen,” she said. “Wileen Jali-
corl.”
“That is not an Earth name,” said a
voice beside them. “Were you born
on Earth?”
Hamden felt his scalp prickle. He
was staring into the girl’s face, but
when the voice spoke out of the empty
air surprise and terror jerked his head
about with a terrible suddenness.
A few feet from where the girl was
sitting a tall shape was materializing in
the green shadows cast by the massive
central pillar. It was assuming form
and substance jerkily, unevenly. Legs
incased in the baggy folds of an oxygen
suit came into view first, then a wrin-
kled waistline distended by a heavy
radium belt, then high above the belt
a face grim and pale and angry, with
eyes that somberly transfixed Harnden
and his companion.
Slowly the space beneath the white
face filled. Frozen into terrified immo-
bility the man and the woman saw
massive shoulders grimly erect in the
green gloom. Objects related to the
figure leaped into visibility — a gleaming
helmet resting firmly on the floor beside
a huge Jeel shoe, a tiny positron blast
tube, no bigger than Hamden’s thumb,
a molecule replacement lamp rimmed
with black light.
The little blast tube, which was
pointed directly at Hamden’s chest, was
held in gloved digits. In the center of
the Foam Station Smasher’s breast the
molecule replacement lamp which had
cloaked his tall form in an impenetrable
screen of light-refracting energy
gleamed with pulsing radiance as it
cooled and crackled.
The woman spoke first. “I thought
I had killed you,” she said, her voice
rising in sudden hysteria. “Are you
alive, or dead? Did you come through
the walls?”
The Foam Station Smasher smiled
grimly, bitterly. “It is not your fault
that I am not dead,” he said. “You
struck with vigor. But women are in-
curable sentimentalists. They defend
themselves with blunt instruments, and
dread the spectacle of splintered skulls.
I am very much alive, girl.”
His eyes gleamed darkly. “I did not
43
RED STORM ON JUPITER
come through the walls. I am not an
apparition. I entered this vessel by the
stern emergency air locks, and descended
quietly, cautiously, like a monkey.”
He nodded in the direction of the
thin metal ladder which led from the
air-lock chamber to the chambers and
corridors above. “Naturally I preferred
to wear a molecule replacement lamp.
The faint green glow which the energy
screen emits was indistinguishable from
the air in this green light. My cruiser
is lighted with blue lamps.”
His lips curled in derisive anger. “I
have been quietly standing here, watch-
ing you. Apparently you do not like
me. I kissed you and you tried to kill
me. To-morrow I will kiss you again.
Up in the flaming skies I will convince
you that I am not such a clumsy lover.”
Harnden started toward him with a
smothered oath. The little blast tube
leaped in the Foam Station Smasher’s
hand. A long tongue of black flame
shot across the chamber, searing Ham-
den’s cheek, setting up a brief, curious
vibration in the metal of the central
pillar. Harnden ducked swiftly and
then hurled his body fiercely forward in
a flying tackle.
HE CAUGHT the Foam Station
Smasher about the knees, his arms and
shoulders quivering with the momentum
of bunched muscles. The Foam Station
Smasher’s feet flew from under him and
he crashed over backward with a startled
oath. His massive, suit-enveloped body
hit the floor with such violence that the
chamber shook.
Hamden was a hard, firm-muscled
veteran of the Jeel. He had served the
law in the lonely Jovian outposts for a
decade. But the Foam Station Smasher
was a mountain of vigorous brawn.
Every inch of him was dangerous.
The fact that Harnden had sent him
sprawling meant little. He simply
threw out one immense arm, and curled
it about Hamden’s torso. He could
have broken all of Hamden’s ribs
swiftly and almost effortlessly with his
gloved hands, but he preferred to kill
quickly.
Harnden writhed in the grip of a
mighty, one-arm hug. Frantically he
raised his fist and smashed it into the
big man’s face. The Foam Station
Smasher simply smiled grimly with en-
crimsoned lips and increased the awful
pressure, on his antagonist’s stomach,,
lungs and backbone.
He had a wiry resistant strength, im-
possible to combat. "Hamden felt a
stabbing agony in his chest. Pain radi-
ated outward in pulsing waves from his
spine, snaked down his arms to his
hands. His perceptions began to waver,
and dim. Faintly, as darkness came
sweeping down upon him, he heard the
girl Wileen sobbing, heard the Foam
Station Smasher’s contemptuous laugh.
The laugh seemed to come from an
immeasurable distance, from somewhere
far beyond the confines of the chamber.
The laugh swelled suddenly into a jeer-
ing cacophony, filling all space, rever-
berating across the black, interstellar
gulfs. Down these gulfs his body spun,
dizzily, with the speed of light.
When he came back to consciousness
there was no longer any pressure on his
limbs. The pain had vanished com-
pletely. He lay for a moment without
motion, wondering why the black gulfs
had spumed him. Then his perceptions
sharpened, anxieties which had lain
comatose quickened into vivid life.
He heard the girl Wileen murmuring,
over and over : “I must kill him. I must
kill him now. I must kill him. I must
kill him now.”
WITH a painful effort Evart Harn-
den sat up. The chamber about him
seemed remote and insubstantial, a vor-
tex of glimmering light and fantastic.
44
ASTOUNDING STORIES
dancing shadows. The walls drew
swiftly toward him, then retreated. He
saw a moving figure amidst the glimmer,
and shifting movements. Backward
and forward before his vision the figure
moved.
“I must kill him. I must kill him
now,” reiterated Wileen as she paced the
chamber, white-faced, ready to faint.
Hamden’s senses cleared. His vision
grew sharp, distinct. He saw the crum-
pled, convulsively writhing form lying
on the floor a few feet from the base of
the stabilizing shaft.' A great shudder
ran over it; the face went whiter than
the face of the pacing girl.
The black, armored cruiser roared
through the red skies, its rocket jets
belching smoke and flame. Fifty thou-
sand miles above the slowly streaming
crust it pierced the immense clouds in
an ecstasy of flight.
The great storm was over. But far
below on the desolate Jeel, Foam Sta-
tions still flashed warnings, and Alpha
City was ablaze with emergency lights.
The girl Wileen sat very still on an
immense sloping wheel within the pilot
chamber of the great vessel, staring
dreamily at the rapidly shifting cloud
masses in the location finder, which
spread fanwise above Hamden’s stooped
shoulders. Hamden was sitting in an
elevated metal chair a few feet away.
“I would have killed him,” said
Wileen suddenly. “If he had not died
I would have shot him with a positron
tube. It is curious how I had nothing
but compassion for him at the end.
Why is it that women are so smug and
self-righteous until some poor devil gets
smashed up. Then we are all com-
passion. It is really very strange.”
“He was a lonely man,” said Ham-
den. “Ruthless and cruel but not with-
out honor. He spared my life once on
the Jeel. I shall always remember that.”
The girl’s face clouded. “I suppose it
was his immense covetousness that de-
stroyed him,” she said. “He put more
radium in one belt than five belts could
hold with safety. I shall never forget
the terror which came into his eyes when
the belt burst.”
Harnden straightened in his chair,
swung about until he was facing her.
“You must try not to think of that,” he
said. “You must get some sleep. I
won’t even. speak to you again until
you’ve rested up a bit.”
She looked at him steadily. “Evart
Harnden,” she said, “suspense is bad
for the nervous system. Why don’t
you tell me that you’re in love with me.
A girl likes to be told.”
Harnden descended from his chair so
swiftly that Wileen feared that he would
slip and fall. As he came toward her
across the pilot chamber her face was
radiant and strangely tender.
“It’s simple, when you know the answer, to see how true
was their every claim.”
Elimination by S D “„ A
A tale of supreme science
and of its trail of madness
J OHN GRANTLAND looked across
at his old friend’s son intently and
unhappily. Finally he sighed heav-
ily and leaned back in his swivel chair.
He lighted his pipe thoughtfully. Two
slow puffs of smoke rose before he
spoke.
“I’m a patent attorney, Dwight Ed-
wards, and I’m at your disposal, as
such, to do your bidding and help you
to secure that patent you want. As you
know, I’m also a civil-and-commercial-
law expert of some standing in connec-
tion with that work. I can get that
patent; I know it is patentable and un-
patented as yet. But before I start pro-
46
ASTOUNDING STORIES
ceedings, I have to tell you something,
Dwight.
“You have enough to live on the rest
of your life, a brilliant mind to increase
it, a scientific ability to keep you occu-
pied and useful to the world. This in-
vention is not useful to the world. If
you were a poor man, I would not hesi-
tate in making the patent applications,
because some wiser men, with more
money, would buy it up and destroy the
thing. But you aren’t poor, and you
would hold out till the thing was devel-
oped and going.”
“But — but Mr. Grantland, it’s a thing
the world needs! We have a fast-van-
ishing gasoline reserve — a coal supply
being drawn on endlessly and reck-
lessly — we need a new source of power,
something to make the immense water-
power supplies in inaccessible regions
available. This system would do that,
and conserve those vanishing resources,
run automobiles, planes, even small fac-
tories and homes ”
“It would destroy our greatest re-
source, the financial structure of the na-
tion. A resource is not a resource un-
less it is available, and only the system
makes it available. The system is more
valuable, more important to human hap-
piness than any other resource, because
it makes all others available.
“I know your natural desire, to de-
velop and spread that system for can-
ning and distributing electricity. It’s a
great invention. But ”
“But,” the younger man said some-
what bitterly, “you feel that any really
great, any important invention should
be destroyed. There must be, you are
saying, no real improvement, only little
gadgets. There must be no Faradays
who discover principles, only Sam
Browns who invent new can openers
and better mousetraps.”
Grantland laid down his pipe and
leaned back in his chair silently.
Bitterly, the younger man was gather-
ing his papers.
“Dwight,” said Grantland at length,
“I think I'll do best if I tell you of one
invention that I have in my files here.
I have shown these papers to just one
other man than the men who made
them. Curiously, he was your father.
He ”
“My father? But he was not an in-
ventor — he was a psychiatrist, utterly
uninterested ”
“He was vitally interested in this.
He saw the apparatus they made, and
he helped me dismantle it, secretly, and
destroy the tube Hugh Kerry and Rob-
ert Darnell made. That was twenty-
two years ago, and it was something of
a miracle I had, at the age of thirty-
six, the sense to do that.
“I’m going to tell you mighty vague
things and mighty vague principles, be-
cause you’re too keen. It isn’t very safe
to tell you this, but I believe you will
Keep a promise. You must swear two
things before I tell you the story : First,
that you will not put that surprisingly
acute mind of yours to work on what I
say, because I cannot tell what clues I
may give. I understood too little to
know how much I understood ; Second,
of course, that you will not spread this
unpleasant story.”
THE YOUNG MAN put down his
papers, looked curiously at John Grant-
land. “I agree to that, Mr. Grantland.”
Grantland stuffed his pipe thought-
fully in silence. “Hugh Kerry and Bob
Darnell were one of those fortuitous
miracles, where the right combination
came together. Hugh Kerry was the
greatest mathematician the world has
seen, at thirty-two.”
“I have heard of him; I’ve used his
analytical methods. He died at thirty-
three, didn’t he?”
“I know,” said Grantland. “The
point is — so did Bob Darnell. Bob
Darnell was something like Edison, on
a higher level. Edison could translate
theory into metal and glass and matter.
ELIMINATION
47
Darnell could do that, but he didn’t
work with steel and copper and glass.
He worked with atoms and electrons
and radiation as familiarly as Edison
worked with metal. And Darnell didn’t
work from theory ; he worked from
mathematics that no theory could be de-
fined for.
“That was the pair the shifting proba-
bilities of space time brought together —
and separated. You've never heard of
Darnell, because he did only one thing,
and that one thing is on paper there,
in that steel vault. In the first place,
it is in a code that is burned into my
memory, and not on paper. In the sec-
ond place, it is safe because every equa-
tion iti it is wrong, because we couldn’t
code equations easily, and the book that
gave them right is out of print, for-
gotten.
“They came into my office first be-
cause they lived near by, and I’d gone
to the same school. I hadn’t much of
a reputation then, of course. That was
when you were just about getting into
the sixth grade, Dwight — a good num-
ber of years ago.
“They had the tube then. They
called it the PTW tube — Probability
Time Wave. They’d been trying to
make a television set that would see
through walls — a device that would send
out its own signals and receive them
back as images.
“They went wrong, something about
trying for the fourth-dimensional ap-
proach and slipping into a higher dimen-
sion. They said that Einstein’s curved
space theory was wrong, and it was the
ten-dimensional multiple theory that was
right.
“But you said something about Fara-
days and Sam Browns. That invention
I suppressed was something so enor-
mous, Dwight, that anything that ever
has or ever will be invented is picayun-
ish squabbling beside it. It was the
greatest tower looming on the road of
progress. It loomed above all other
things as the sun looms greater than
earth. It was the greatest thing that
ever was or will be, because it neces-
sarily incorporated the discovery of ev-
erything that ever will be or can be.”
“What — what could be so great ? The
power of the atom ”
“That was one of the lesser things it
incorporated, Dwight. It would have
meant that, in a year or so, and the se-
cret of gravity, of interplanetary, inter-
stellar flight, the conquest of age, and
eternal life. Everything you can dream
of John, and all the things that any
man ever will dream of.
“They knew all that when they came
to me. They explained it all, and be-
cause I couldn’t believe — they showed
me. You cannot conceive of such a
thing — anything— so inconceivably far
reaching in scope? I’m not surprised.
They told me what I have told you, and
but that they said it all in such quiet,
assured voices, with such perfect and
absolute confidence, I’d have called them
liars and put it down to the vain boast-
ing of the Sam Brown you mentioned,
with his mighty new mousetrap and his
miraculous can opener — the invention
of the ages.
“It’s simple when you know the an-
swer, to see how true was their every
claim. Their television slipped. It
slipped aside, into some higher dimen-
sion, they guessed, and instead of pene-
trating the walls and the buildings
through that fourth dimension they
sought, they decided it had slipped out
and beyond space and time, and looked
back to review it, a mighty pageant of
incredible history — the history that was
to be.
“YOU SEE, in that was the incredi-
ble and infinite scope of the thing, be-
cause it showed, in 'the past, all that
had been, the infinite sweep and march
of all time from the creation to the pres-
ent.
48
ASTOUNDING STORIES
“But then the ordered ranks broke,
for, from the present to the other end
of infinity, no single thing or any cir-
cumstance is immutably fixed. Their
PTW cube caught and displayed every
possibility that was ever to exist. And
somewhere in that vast sweep of prob-
ability, every possible thing existed.
Somewhere, the wildest dream of the
wildest optimist was, and became fact.
“On that screen tube I saw the sun
born, and on it I saw the sun die a
million deaths. I saw them move plan-
ets, and I saw the planets moving in
birth. I saw life created, and I saw it
created again in test tubes and labora-
tories. I saw man arise — and I saw
men and women more perfect in body
and mind than the dream of Praxiteles
created from acetylene and ammonia.
Because somewhere in the realms of
possibility, remote or so near as to be
probable, those dreams of every scien-
tist came true, and with them, the un-
guessed dreams of unguessable intellects.
“Hugh Kerry and Bob Darnell came
to me when the thing was new, and they
faintly conceived of its possibilities.
That was in 1937. And in five days
the world would have known and been
at their feet — but for two things — three,
really. First, because the thing, they
knew, was imperfect, and, what they
didn’t know, was severely limited ; Sec-
ond, because they had begun to trace
their own life tracks, and were worried,
even then. I caught some of that worry
from them and held back. I never let
them cast for my life tracks. To-day
I do not know what will come to-mor-
row; Third, and what was perhaps the
determining reason, they were still poor,
but growing rich rapidly by the informa-
tion that machine brought them of the
little, everyday things that were to be
two days ahead.
“You could pile up an enormous for-
tune, Dwight, if you just knew with a
probability of eighty-five on their scale
of a hundred, what to-morrow and to-
morrow would bring. They did, and
first the number pool hated them and
refused their business, then the betting
rings refused their bets, and, finally,
even the stock market began to act un-
favorably. Because they won, of course.
“But before then, they had begun to
Jo r get that, and concentrated on the life
tracks the machine showed them.
“I said the machine was limited. It
was limited by two factors : one was
the obvious difficulty of seeing the for-
est and the shape of the forest when in
the middle of it. They were in the mid-
dle of the parade, and there they must
stay. They could not see the near fu-
ture clearly, for the near forest was
hidden by the trees. The far future
they could see like a vast marching col-
umn that split and diverged slowly.
They saw no individual figure, only the
blended mass of the march to infinity.
“At a year, the parade began to blend,
and the features were lost by the estab-
lishment of the trend. But, at two days,
two weeks, their screen showed a figure
blurred and broken by the splitting im-
ages that broke away, each following
its own line of possible development.
“Look. A vision of me in the future
by only ten minutes will show me in a
thousand life courses. Primarily,
there are two ; I may live, or die.
But even those two instantly become
a thousand, for I may die now, or
at any later instant. I may die by
the falling of the building or the stop-
page of my heart, by an assassin’s bul-
let, by the knife of a disgruntled inven-
tor. They are improbable, and their
future images would, on Bob Darnell’s
screen, have been dim, and ghostly.
The world might end in that ten min-
utes, so destroying me. That must be
there, for it is possible, a very faint im-
age, so shadowy it is scarcely visible.
“If I live, a thousand courses are
open: I may sit here, smoking peace-
AST-3
ELIMINATION
49
fully ; the telephone may ring ; a fire
may break out. Probably I shall con-
tinue to sit, and smoke — so strong and
solid on the screen is an image of my-
self sitting, smoking. But shading from
it in ever lighter black and gray to
faintest haziness, is each of those other
possibilities.
“THAT confused them, made exact
work difficult. To get their reports of
the markets, they had to determine with
an absolute rigor that the next day’s
paper should be put on a certain stand,
spread to the page they wanted, and,
come hell or high water, they would yet
put that paper there, and not move it
so much as a hairbreadth. The image
became probable, highly probable. Its
ghost images faded. They read it.
“And there’s one other fault. I know
the reason I’d rather not give it. Just
take this for one of the facts of that in-
vention that by the very stuff of space,
time shall never be overcome. The place
they might determine, or the time, with
absolute exactitude, but never would
they ever know both for any given event.
“And the third day they cast for their
future tracks. The near future was a
confused haze, but I was with them
when they sought in the future far
enough for the haze to go. Laughing,
elated, they cast a hundred years ahead,
when, Bob Darnell said, ‘I’ll be a man
with my long white beard looped
through my trousers and over my shoul-
ders for suspenders !’
“They started their machine, and set
the control for probabilities in a very
low range, for the chance of Bob Dar-
nell living to one hundred and thirty-
three years of age was remote. They
had a device on their machine that
would automatically sweep the future,
till it found a lane that was occupied, a
track that was not dead, in which Bob
Darnell still lived. It was limited in
speed — but not greatly, for each second
AST-4
it looked down five hundred thousand
tracks.’’
“Reaction speed of a photocell,” said
the young man slowly. “I know.”
“Dwight, try not to know,” pleaded
Grantland. “I mean to give no such
hints — but only what is needed to under-
stand.”
“If you say two times two— can you
expect me to omit a mental four ?” asked
the young man. “Five hundred thou-
sand a second is the reaction of a photo-
cell. What is there in this invention
that demands its suppression?”
“That is part of it. Five hundred
thousand tracks a second it swept, and
an hour passed, and another, and Dar-
nell laughed at it.
“ ‘I guess I’m not due for a long, full
life,’ he said.
“And just then the machine clicked
his answer. When we saw the image
on the screen, we thought the range was
wrong, for the Bob Darnell on the
screen was a healthier, stronger, sounder
man than the Bob Darnell beside me.
“He was tanned and lean and muscu-
lar ; his hair was black as night, and his
hands were muscular and firm-fleshed.
He looked thirty, not a hundred and
thirty. But his eyes were old, they
were old as the hills, and keen with a
burning vigor as they seemed to con-
centrate on us. Slowly he smiled, and
firm, even teeth appeared between his
lips.
“Darnell whistled softly. ‘They’ve
licked old age,’ he almost whispered.
“Evidently they had. Hugh spoke.
‘They probably found it in some future
age with this machine,’ he whispered
tensely. ‘You’re one keen old gentle-
man, Bob.’
“ ‘But that’s not a good chance for
life apparently,’ Darnell said. “I won-
der how 1 can choose the course that
leads me there?’
“ ‘Live a clean life, drink nothing
50
ASTOUNDING STORIES
but water,’ Kerry said. ‘Turn on, O
time, in your flight. Let's see what else
we have.’
“DARNELL started the machine
again — and it stopped almost instantly.
One of Darnell’s other tracks appeared.
He’d gotten there that time with no
outside aid, and he was horrible.
‘Ah-h-h ’ said Bob distastefully. ‘I
like the other way better. That face —
turn it along, Hugh.’
“The mean, rheumy-eyed, incredibly
seamed face disappeared ; the screen
went blank. And it stayed blank. Those
were Bob’s only tracks at that age.
‘Not too bad,’ he said, though. ‘I didn’t
think I had a chance in the world.’
“ ‘Let’s see what we get at ten years,’
Hugh suggested. ‘That’s more to the
point.’
“ ‘We’ll wait all night getting through
them,’ objected Bob. ‘But we’ll take a
few. Better start with about seventy
probability. Ten years is long enough
for me to die in, perhaps, so that ought
to be fairly high.’
“They started again. And it ran for
an hour — two hours. Bob Darnell had
stopped laughing now, because he didn’t
like that blank and stubborn assurance
that he had a mighty slim chance of liv-
ing ten years more. Two hours and a
half and it was begining to tell on Dar-
nell. ‘Looks like I guessed too high,’
was all he said.
“Then we got a track. It was Bob
Darnell, all right, but his face was round
and soft and flatulent, and he lay on a
soft rubber floor on his back, with a lit-
tle pair of trunks on, and he was grin-
ning senselessly with a blank, stupid
face at a male nurse who was feeding
him some kind of gruel that he slob-
bered and spilled down his fat, soft
cheeks. There wasn't any mind at all
behind the dull, round eyes.
“It took us about ten seconds to take
in that scene that was something like
ten years in the future. Then Bob
spoke, and his voice was flat and
strained. ‘I’d say that was dementia
prcecox, and I’d say that damned ma-
chine was wrong, because I’m not going
to be that way. I’m going to be dead
first. It’s the nastiest form of insanity
I can thing of offhand. Start that thing
up, Hugh.’
“The trails got closer together there.
We got another one in half an hour,
and all that half hour we stood in abso-
lute silence in the dim laboratory, while
the machine clicked and hummed, and
the screen writhed and flickered with
blankness, because neither of us could
think of anything to say to Bob, and
Bob was too busy thinking to say any-
thing.
“THEN the machine stopped again.
It didn't take so long to understand that
scene. Hugh started it on again. It
found seven trails like that in the next
hour. Then it found a sane trail, more
or less, but it was a Bob Darnell who
had gone through insanity. He wasn’t
actually insane, but his nervous system
was broken.
“ ‘Evidently you recover,’ I said, try-
ing to be hopeful.
“Bob grinned — unpleasantly. He
shook his head. ‘You don’t recover. If
you do — it wasn’t dementia prcecox.
Prcecox is an insanity that is simply a
slow disintegration of the mind ; it gets
tired of worry and trouble, and decides
the easiest way out is to go back to
childhood, when there weren’t any wor-
ries or troubles. But it goes back and
discovers again the worries children
have, and keeps going back and back,
seeking the time when there were no
troubles — and generally is stopped by
pneumonia or tuberculosis or hemor-
rhage of the atrophied brain.
“ ‘But it never recovers, and it's the
most ghastly form of insanity there is
because it is hopeless. It turns a strong.
ELIMINATION
51
sound man into a helpless, mindless in-
fant. It’s not like idiocy, because an
idiot never grew up. This grows up,
all right — and then grows down, lower
than anything normal could be.
“ ‘That’s just one path where I had
a nervous breakdown and got over it.
That one — why it might lead to the one-
hundred-and-thirty-four-year-old track.
But just — go on, Hugh.’
“Hugh went on — on and on, and we
found three sound, sane tracks.
“I don’t have to go into more detail.
I think you can understand Darnell’s
feelings. We tried at five years, and a
few more tracks showed up. At two
years, that first night, we found eighteen
tracks, and eleven of them were insane,
and seven sane. We named the two-
year tracks on the Greek alphabet.
“The track Bob wanted, the long
track that took him to a hundred and
thirty-four, and beyond, clear out to a
point where he merged in the march of
the infinite future, was his tau track.
The alpha, beta, gamma, delta — all those
were quite insane, and quite horrible.
That meant that, by far, the greater
probability led to the unpleasant tracks.
“ ‘Hugh, I guess it’s your turn, if
you want to try,’ said Bob finally.
‘We’ll have to check these more care-
fully later.’
“ ‘I think I do want to know,’ Hugh
said. ‘But maybe Grantland would like
to go now. He can’t be here all the
time.’
“ ‘No, thank Heaven,’ I said, ‘I can’t,
and I don’t want to know my tracks.
Bob, I think one of the best ways to
strike that tau track is to destroy this
machine now.’
“Bob stared at me, then grinned lop-
sidedly. ‘I can’t now, John. For one
thing, I have no right to; it means too
much to the world. For another, I’ve
got to find what decisions will put me
on that long track. I made this thing
because I knew I couldn’t live to see
that long march we’ve already seen,
leading on to the infinity even this can’t
reach. Now, by all that is to be, I’ve
got to find how I can reach that time!’
“ ‘By all that is to be, Bob, I know in
my bones you won’t, if this machine
endures.’
“Bob grinned and shook his head at
me.
“ ‘I can’t, John,’ he said.
“And Hugh started the machine down
his trails. He’d set it for a hundred
years, like Darnell, at a slightly higher
figure than had disclosed the far end of
Bob’s tau track. We picked up Hugh’s
pretty quickly, and he too looked sound
and healthy. But he had no second
trail — one chance to live to be a hun-
dred and thirty-three.
“ ‘I’m about as good on long life as
you, Bob,’ he said, ‘if somebody helps
me, but I guess I can’t make it alone.’
“ ‘Well, I’m not interested in going it
alone myself,’ Bob replied. ‘It’s not a
heck of a lot better than some of those
other things we’ve seen. Let’s get closer
home.’
“THEY tried the ten-year track.
And on Hugh Kerry’s trails, the ma-
chine clicked and hummed for a long,
long time, and Kerry began to look
paler and paler in the light from that
wavering screen, because he didn’t even
have a chance of insane life.
“ ‘Let’s leave it for the night,’ said
Hugh finally. ‘It’s eight o’clock, and
I’m hungry as a wolf. We can leave
it running on the recorder, and come
back after supper, maybe.’
“We came back after supper. It was
ten, then. And the machine was still
clicking and humming.
“We went home for the night. You
see, reasonably enough, Hugh had as-
sumed that he had a fair chance of liv-
ing ten years, but he didn’t, of course.
52
ASTOUNDING STORIES
The machine was examining nearly two
billion chances every hour it ran — and
finding them blank.
“Hugh was down at seven the next
morning. I got there at ten and found
Bob and Hugh sitting very quiet, try-
ing to smoke. The machine was still
humming and clicking, and there wasn’t
a thing at all on the recorder.
“ ‘Looks like I’m not slated for a long
life,’ Hugh greeted me unhappily, try-
ing to grin. ‘It hasn't found — thank
Heaven!’ The machine stopped sud-
denly.
“It was Hugh, quite hale and sound,
his hair a bit gray, his eyes a bit sunken,
his face a bit lined, but sane — and sound.
“ ‘That’s what we called your tau
track,’ said Bob after a minute of exam-
ination. ‘You make the hundred-year
mark on the first try.’
“ ‘In other words,’ said Kerry softly,
‘I’ve got about as much chance of living
ten years as I have of living a hundred.
Yes. That’s a good way to put it. A
hell of a chance. What does it say at
two years?’
“It took a long time, because we didn’t
want to start on the low probabilities,
of course, and there just weren’t any
good ones. We didn’t find anything
very quickly. Eventually we knew he
had three sane and one insane at ten
years, and eleven all together at two
years — three insane. And they were all
of them so far down in probability, they
started working right away.
“But the thing that brought home the
need of haste was that when we looked,
just for a moment, at Bob’s two-year
trails — two of the sane, and five insane
trails had vanished ! They had been
eliminated by decisions made since the
previous evening. I knew, Bob and
Hugh knew, what the decision was, but
we didn’t say anything. He had decided
to look at Hugh’s trails in that time, and
found those few trails. They cut off
at one year, we found, so they had to
work on them. That, you see, reduced
Bob Darnell’s chances of finding the
right trail — the tau trail that wasn’t in
tau position any more, but, thank
Heaven, still existed.
“ ‘It’s not so hard, though,’ said
Kerry. ‘We need only look to see what
developments we make to-morrow, and
to-morrow’s to-morrow, to find how to
perfect this machine, to eliminate the
near-future images. We’ll get it.’
“I had my business that I was trying
to build up, so I had to leave them. I
couldn’t see them for five days, because
I had to appear out in St. Louis, and
stop over in Washington.
“WHEN I got back I went around
to see them, thought it was nearly eleven
o’clock. They were at it.
“ ‘We’ve made some progress,’ LIugh
said. ‘We’ve both mapped our trails
carefully till they vanish in the near-
future mists. We’ll be able to hit that
long trail for Bob fairly easily, but — -
I’m afraid I’ll have to give mine up,’
he said, his face twitching just a little.
‘Still, that’ll leave me some forty-five
years of useful life, and a quick death
way off in 1982. That’s a long way
to go.’
“ ‘H-has your long trail been elimi-
nated by a decision?’ I asked.
“ ‘Hm-m-m — in a sense. I located
one of its decision points by luck. It’s
only about a month away, apparently.
It is less, I believe, but we can’t tell.
I took a snap view of the trail, and hit
what is evidently a decision point on it.
What you didn’t know is that twenty-
seven years of that long trail is hopeless
paralysis in pain. I apply for euthanasia
four times unsuccessfully. Since I know
where that trail leads, and still apply
for that — why, I think I don’t want it,
anyway. But the trouble is, really, that
the decision point I snapped, by sheer
luck, is an automobile accident.
“ ‘We’ve been trying to take install-
ELIMINATION
53
taneous exposures of the trails, in the
near future, to eliminate the blurring.
We can do it by using a blurred image
to get space coordinates and snapping
the controls into lock position. The
time register is automatically thrown
out of gear, so we have only a vague
idea of time. We know it’s this year
— but whether it’s late this month, or
early next, I don’t know. We can’t
know.’
“ ‘But the accident ’
“ ‘I’d go through with it, perhaps —
if I had some control. But Tom Phil-
lips is driving. If I drive, of course,
that’s a different track altogether. He
has my fate in his hands — and I can’t
bring myself to take it.’
“ ‘Have you told Tom ?’ I asked.
" ‘Not yet, but I’m expecting him
over. I sent a note around that he ought
to get to-day or to-morrow, I ’
“The telephone rang. Hugh answered
it. Tom Phillips was on the other end.
He had the note, luckily, as he was
packing then to drive up to Boston. He
wanted Hugh to come over and tell him
the story, or whatever it was Hugh
wanted him for. Naturally, it would do
no good if Tom couldn’t see the ma-
chine, so, by dint of nearly fifteen min-
utes arguing, Hugh got him to come
over.
“ ‘Whew — if I hadn’t been so afraid
of riding with Tom, I would have gone
over, at that,’ said Hugh, mopping his
head. ‘He’s a stubborn cuss when he
gets an idea. I hope I can — eh ? What,
Bob?’
“Bob Darnell, in the laboratory, had
called something.
“ ‘What is it, Bob?’ Hugh asked, go-
ing over.
“I went over, too. ‘Oh, hello, John.
I didn’t know you were back. Patent
go through all O. K. ?’
“ ‘Fine,’ I answered. ‘Everything’s
in order. What was it you wanted to
tell Hugh?’
“ ‘Yes — just told me. He had just
finished calling Tom Phillips when you
called him.’
“ ‘What ! My heaven ! I called him
— because his long track vanished while
I was looking at it then ! That was a
decision point !’
“We looked eagerly. It was gone, all
right. And suddenly Plugh stiffened.
‘Bob,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid; I’m scared
as hell — because maybe that was a deci-
sion point, because I didn’t go over for
Tom. I’m going to ’
“HE WENT, too— to call up Tom
Phillips. But he was too late then, and
he never got him. Tom hadn’t seen a
gravel truck smashing down a side
street, hidden from him by a stopped
trolley car.
“ ‘I was supposed to go over for
him,’ was all Hugh could say. ‘But how
was I to know? We didn’t know the
time accurately. We couldn’t, could
we, Bob? I didn’t know I didn’t
know ’
“But to the day of his death, he could
not shake the feeling that he had brought
Tom Phillips out to be killed, almost de-
liberately. It meant nothing that he had
called him to warn him. He had called
him out to death. He had been slow
in his warning.
“A week later they had mapped their
future trails; they had every decision
point mapped, and noted; they knew
every move that they must make to take
them down those trails that led to that
maximum of life each was granted.
Every decision, every turn and branch
of the road that led to happiness, suc-
cess — except those they must make in
the next ten months.
“From a high peak they could see
the road that led off across the broad
fields of the open country to the distant
city of life they sought — but the tangled,
snarled traffic of the near-by city where
they were obscured the little alleys and
54
ASTOUNDING STORIES
twisting, crooked streets of the near fu-
ture in an inextricable maze.
“ ‘We’ll get it, though,’ Hugh said
confidently. ‘We’re getting it better and
better now. We’ve found a system that
will work, we think. You see, if to-day
we can see what we will develop to-
morrow, we will be a day ahead, and
then if we see what comes the day after,
we’ll be two days. In a week we should
have the thing solved. It is only that
it becomes so annoying to remember — ■
this may be the decision day, and I do
not know it. And Bob is working hard
to find my decisions, because I have so
few lines beyond this December, appar-
ently. He has plenty of sound lines
leading on through next year.
“ ‘That seems to make my case the
more imperative, for I do not want to
die when life is so near. Yet we can-
not know even this, for the paths twine
and twist, and it may be that my deci-
sion point to the long trail I seek is in
December. And, similarly, it may be
that the decision point Bob seeks — is to-
morrow. We cannot guess, we cannot
know, who is in the more desperate posi-
tion, the more immediately threatened
state.
“ ‘But to-morrow we will advance
faster, because we have determined as
inflexibly as our determination to place
that newspaper on the stand, that we
shall hereafter, invariably, put on the
blackboard there the discoveries of the
day, and the progress made. That, we
think, will clear up the images.’
“ ‘Will clear up the images?’ I asked
in some surprise.
“Because, you remember, Dwight,
that it instantly cleared up the news-
paper images.
“Hugh looked a little worried.
“ ‘Will,’ he repeated. ‘You see, it
didn’t so very much at first, for some
reason. I can’t quite But at any
rate, by watching our progress that we
are to make, we will make swift advance
to the discovery of the secret, and long
life.’
“It seemed so clear,' so true, so logi-
cal. If they could steal the inventions
of a million years in the future, could
they not spy on their own progress of
the next day and the next? So simple,
so logical an advance.
“But they missed one thing. There
were many, many things they could try,
and though they inflexibly determined
that they would write on the blackboard
the progress of the day, and did, the
blackboard was blurred white and gray
on the screen. For each of the thou-
sand things they might try was there,
you see, and from the first day two prob-
abilities entered; that they deciphered,
and tried one of those courses, and that
they did not decipher the next day’s
work, and had to develop it directly.
“THREE TIMES they read that
blackboard. Each time the next day’s
blackboard read: ‘Did work shown by
future image yesterday.’ So, when they
did read it, remember, they saw only a
day’s work done, and the day’s work
was yet to be done, though they knew
what it must be. If you are a repair
man and know that to-morrow you must
change the clutch plates and put in new
transmission gears, that knowledge does
not eliminate the operation.
“They thought it might spare them
the blind alleys. But one of those day’s
work was a blind alley that they were
forced to rip out the next.
“I was called over one day, the third
time they read that blackboard, and they
showed it to me. There were many,
many images on it, and only one was
legible, because it was very, very brief,
and written very large.
“Hugh smiled lopsidedly at me when
I came in. ‘Well, John, I think we’ve
found one of my decision points,’ he
said.
“ ‘What ! got those near futures
ELIMINATION
55
cleared up?’ I was immensely pleased.
They’d advanced a lot, you know, since
I first saw the instrument. Their near-
future images were sometimes quite
readable; their selectivity had been in-
creased a thousandfold. But there was
still a mistiness, a sort of basic misti-
ness.
“ ‘No,’ Darnell interrupted. ‘We
read the blackboard. Come — you can
see it.’
“I did. It was quite easy to read,
because Hugh had always been the one
to write on the board, and his writing
was cramped and neat. On many of
those images the writing was cramped
and neat. But on many others it was
a broad, looping scrawl — Darnell’s hand.
It said simply: ‘Hugh Kerry killed to-
day. May God have mercy on me.’
“I swallowed hard before I spoke.
‘There’s a lot of images there, Hugh.’
“ ‘Yes, but it’s a decision point. Bob
has sworn, and determined by all that’s
holy, he’ll write the full facts on the
case to-morrow, and not that message.
The message still sticks, and none other
has appeared. It’s a decision point —
and may God have mercy on me, too,
for I don’t know what that decision
must be. It won’t even tell me whether
to stay indoors here or stay out of here.’
“Dwight, that is the thing that pressed
and pressed on them. It was like the
old Chinese water torture, and each day
was a drop of water that fell, and they
were bound to the wheel of time that
cannot stop or be stopped. They had
now the vision to see across that wheel
to another day and another age — but
they could not slow that progress
through time, nor speed it by a whit.
“The days must come, and they must
go, for all their knowledge of time. And
the sun that day sank, as it had a thou-
sand thousand thousand times before,
and would a thousand thousand thou-
sand times again, and it rose on a new
day. No force, nor will, nor wish could
stay that progress ; the day must come.
And Hugh could not know, because the
message was so stubborn, whether his
decision lay in that laboratory or out in
the open.
“I could not leave them. Yet I had
to, because time still went on, and the
courts went on. I left, on a case I know
not the faintest detail of, save that I
fought it with a bitter determination to
win, and somehow won it.
“IT WAS four thirty when I got back
to the laboratory. Bob Darnell met me,
and his face was white and tense.
‘Hugh?’ I asked.
“ ‘He’s gone over to Teckno Prod-
ucts for some apparatus,’ said Darnell
quietly. ‘He wouldn’t let me go. He
ought to be back. Come into the labora-
tory. I’ve been watching his trails.’
“I went with him into the laboratory
where the rustle and hum of the ma-
chine, and the flickering, greenish light
of the screen made it seem a sorcerer’s
lair of necromancy. Bob looked at the
screen, then he turned to me with an
unpleasant grin. ‘It’s blank, John.
Those are Hugh Kerry’s trails one year
from to-day,’ he said. He walked over
to the blackboard very slowly, like an
automaton, and picked up a piece of
chalk. Slowly he erased the words on
the slate, and in a round, broad scrawl
he wrote : ‘Hugh Kerry killed to-day.
May God have mercy on me.’
“ ‘Bob,’ I said, ‘Bob — that’s the mes-
sage you swore you wouldn’t write.
Erase it — wait till we know, till we know
what happened to him so we can write
the details. That may ’
“ ‘Save him ?’ asked Bob bitterly.
‘What matter now? He’s dead now.
But if you like, we can find the details.
But nothing will do any good at all,
because he’s dead now, anyway. What
good will it do to change that message?
He’s already taken- the wrong trail, and
56
ASTOUNDING STORIES
reached the end, John. But I’ll find
out ’
“He called up the police.' He asked
if they knew what had happened to
Hugh Kerry, how he had been killed.
“The telephone was a noisy one, al-
ways had been, and I heard the answer
where I stood. ‘Hugh Kerry, eh? I
have no report on any one by that name.
What makes you think he’s been killed,
and how?’
“ ‘He must be dead by this time,’ said
Bob. ‘Ask your men, please. I — what?’
“ ‘The other desk man,’ said the man
at the telephone, ‘just got a call, and he
says if you’re looking for a guy named
Hugh Kerry, he was just killed by a
girl driver at Fourteenth and Seventh.
He stepped out from behind a parked
car right Say, who’s calling?’
“ ‘Thanks, officer. Robert Darnell
calling, from One Forty-three East
Eighty-seventh. I’m going right over
to the scene ’
“We went over in my car, got there
pretty quickly, but the ambulance had
already taken Hugh Kerry and the girl
driver away. We heard from her later.
Hugh had simply walked right into the
side of her car, practically tripped over
her running board. She was in the hos-
pital with hysterics then. She kept
saying he looked so surprised — as though
somebody had suddenly explained some-
thing to him. Somebody had, you see —
a surprisingly easy answer to a complex
problem.
“Bob Darnell tried to get his car,
that Hugh had driven over to Teckno
Products in, but the police picked him
up. I wasn’t a criminal lawyer, and I
had to go downtown and get Bill Poole,
a classmate of mine, to come and help
him out.
“It was a bad problem, too, we found
out. Three weeks before Hugh Kerry
had taken out a one-year-term-insur-
ance policy for a hundred thousand dol-
lars. And it had a double-indemnity
clause in case of accidental death. The
insurance company was fighting for their
two hundred thousand dollars, and the
police were fighting for a murder charge.
Because, you remember, Bob Darnell
had said over the telephone : ‘He must
be dead by this time.’
“The time machine was too wild. We
couldn’t get any clear images to show
them anything to speak of. But, finally,
they had to let Bob go, because it’s aw-
fully difficult to prove murder when a
man is killed in an automobile accident
at one end of town, and a man you're
accusing is calling the police station
from the other. And they never tried
to involve the poor girl who was the
direct instrument of death.
“I went back with Bob Darnell, when
they released him. I was with him
when he started up the machine, and
looked at his trails. There were only
five left, because Hugh Kerry’s trails
were gone, now, and they had crossed
and intertwined with Bob Darnell’s, of
course. The long trail was there, and
one other sane trail — that ended in three
years. The other three were all insane
trails.
“BOB went to work harder than
ever, and because I’d gotten behind in
my work while Bob was tied up, I had
to go to work harder than ever. It was
three weeks before I could even get
around to the laboratory.
“Bob Darnell greeted me at the door
when I did. He had one of those slip
chains on the door, and opened it only
a crack when he let me in. ‘Those in-
surance people kept bothering me,’ he
explained. ‘They want to see what I’m
doing all the time. They aren’t going
to, though.’
“I looked at him, and his eyes and
forehead were screwed up in worry and
concentration.
“ ‘John,’ he said finally, ‘you know it’s
too bad Hugh went after that apparatus
ELIMINATION
57
Teckno was making. I got it and put
it in, and they didn’t make it right at
all. I think maybe they’re trying to
make me order more so they can see
how this works. I shouldn’t have told
the police about my chronoscope. But
I put the apparatus in, and I think I got
it in right, and John, it makes the near-
future images better, but what do you
think — it cuts out some of the long-
range tracks. It won’t show them all
now.’
“His voice seemed quite annoyed, and
rather petulant, I thought.
“‘It won't?’ I said, quite softly, I
think. ‘Let me see.’
“ ‘No. It Won’t show them right.
There are five. I saw ’em myself. But
this thing won’t work right. It cuts
out four of them, and only shows one
little short one. There’s something
wrong with it. I figured out what once,
but I can’t seem to remember any more.
But I don’t like Teckno any more, and
I won’t buy anything from ’em any
more. I’m going to make ’em take this
back.
“ ‘Help me disconnect it, John? You
remember how the chronoscope works ;
I can’t seem to find the connections since
I put in the wrong stuff Teckno made.
I’ve been so worried, John, with the
insurance company bothering me, and
this not working right.’
“ ‘It isn’t working right, eh ?’ I asked.
‘There’s only one trail left? Well, you
know, Bob, they change.’
“ ‘No. There ought to be five trails.
I know, cause I saw ’em,’ he said de-
cisively.
“So I went into the laboratory with
him, and I looked at the screen, and
there was only one trail, as he had said.
It was as I had expected since I entered
the house that day. I told Bob then that
I couldn’t help him any more, but that
I had a friend who might be able to,
though I wasn’t sure. So I went away
and brought your father, Dwight, who
was, as I told you, the only other man
who ever saw the chronoscope or the
drawings of it.
“He helped me take it apart and break
up the parts that might have been re-
vealing.”
John Grantland paused a long min-
ute, his head sunk forward on his chest.
He raised it slowly and added, as though
an afterthought: “We were glad it was
a very short track. It could have been
so long ”
DWIGHT EDWARDS rose slowly,
dropping his papers on Grantland’s
desk. He sighed as he turned away.
“The world doesn’t need all its Fara-
days, does it ?” And as he walked
through the door, “You’ll take care of
those papers for me ”
Alka -Saltier
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tion containing an analgesic foce-
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Headaches, Sour Stomach, Distress
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Alkalize with Alka-Seltzer d^gc^ts 30-60 c lSli
High against the clouds
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Earth than was Gatti himself.
He rose from his chair, as the giant
saluted, making a sweeping arc with
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mander, the admiral to see you already !”
“Well?” Gatti said. “You’re keeping
him waiting !” He smiled a little to
soften the sharpness of his tone as
Klein’s blue eyes blinked.
The giant backed away, clicked his
heels and went out the door. Soon a
rotund, bald man in the uniform of a
stratosphere rocket admiral strode stiffly
into the room. Gatti recognized Ad-
miral Ruoff, of course, though he was
now hardly the beaming, enthusiastic
chief who had fathered Gatti’s last flight
into the zone of the asteroids. He was
a warrior still, a drawn-faced warrior,
plainly badgered and puzzled. For a
60
ASTOUNDING STORIES
moment he dropped all reserve, all for-
mality. “Gatti ! Lord, it’s good to have
you back.” Hands clasped, they stood,
and for a moment, an old, devilish danc-
ing light broke into Gatti’s brown eyes
and found response in the softening cor-
ners of Ruoff’s mouth. Then the ad-
miral’s lips drew straight and Gatti
knew he was thinking of Cuba.
Beyond Havana harbor was a base
which festered with active evils. From
that base, mechanical monsters crawled
into the sea to emerge upon American
shores with automatic destruction. The
whole Atlantic coast was already de-
molished, and no way had been discov-
ered to halt the diabolical things at the
shore, although scientists were working
day and night to invent some barrier
that would hold them.
The light died from Gatti’s eyes as he
waited for Ruoff to speak. Then it
came, worse than he had dreamed.
“Down — every one of them, Gatti.
Your ship is the last of our proud ar-
mada. I gave you up months ago.
Now there’s a chance ” He cut his
sentence and cast a suspicious stare at
Klein.
Klein’s big face grew violently
flushed. Too evidently he was ill at
ease. Gatti understood Klein’s embar-
rassment as well as the admiral’s suspi-
cion. Klein was German, of course, but
what difference? Germany was not the
only European nation at war. Would
to Heaven that were so, but they were
all the enemy now ; no man might claim
his descent from any other source than
some member of the damned entente!
America was a composite of them all.
Yet Gatti knew that Klein’s dialect
was a sensitive point, doubly embarrass-
ing since the outbreak of war.
Klein, conscious of his position, had
taken to advertising his loyalty. In his
coat he wore a small American flag, he
rumbled anathema against all American
enemies. He straffed the power in Ger-
many for falling in with the dictator
handling the united charge of the Old
World against the New.
KLEIN needed none of these defenses
with Gatti. Klein had followed him up
into the far spaces where countries
shrink to vague molecules making up the
faint ruddiness of a far-distant star.
Klein had never failed him where death
was czar and life crusaded far from its
base through a despotic realm. Klein
had done even more; he had offered his
body as a shield for Gatti when it seemed
that death was to be the cost of such a
move. Klein had been tried in many
fires, and his metal was good.
“Don’t worry about Klein,” Gatti as-
sured. “I’d sooner mistrust myself. In
fact, admiral” — Gatti’s eyes lighted with
that old dancing devilishness loved by
every man of his crew — “he taught the
Martians ‘My Country, ’Tis of Thee.’ ”
Admiral Ruoff did not smile, but
clicked back to serious business. “Com-
mander Gatti,” he said stiffly, “it is my
duty to order you back into the void.
It is also my duty to warn you of peril.
Upon your mission depends whatever
hope we have to-day, if the report I have
received from you is all that you say.”
“You mean?”
“I mean the report of Selenite you
coded to me by light beam from Luna
six days ago.”
Gatti stood as frozen as though Ruoff
had hypnotized him.
Selenite! How had it escaped him?
It was a wild hope, but it was a hope.
“If this leaks out,” Admiral Ruoff was
saying with another glare at Klein,
“you’re finished. You can’t get as far
as Luna, much less to the planetoid.”
Gatti hardly heard the mention of any
peril to himself. He had named that
metal. He had discovered it two years
past at the cost of half his crew, who
were unable to carry on because they
were stricken totally blind. Blindness I
DOOMED BY THE PLANETOID 61
The very name burned him as the men-
tion of water burns a famished man.
Selenite? A ton of it would mean
everything to American defense. There
were a thousand tons of it out there
in space; in fact, a whole planetoid of
it burning its blinding way through the
darkness of the void, dazzling the vacu-
um by its intense penetrations. Sel-
enite was one of the thousand asteroids
sweeping around the Sun through the
280,000,000-rnile band of vacancy be-
tween Mars and Jupiter, a bright dia-
mond set in a necklace of dull stones.
"You’ve named it!” Gatti cried, los-
ing his calm in the fever of enthusiasm.
"We must have mechanical loaders and
replace this quartz glass with that made
for protection against the emanation.
With a ton of that stuff over Cuba,
good Lord, admiral, not a man on the
island could see a wink. They’d not be
able to even feed themselves !”
"How long will it take?” Ruoff de-
manded coldly.
"How soon can you change my glass
and get me loading equipment?”
Ruoff pulled his mustache, squinted
at the ceiling, “I’d say two weeks, with
luck.”
Gatti wheeled out a chart and made
a few figures. “In that case we can
probably be back in a couple of years.”
Ruoff stared hard into Gatti ’s sober
face. “In two years there will be no
war.”
"Taking long chances,” Gatti ven-
tured, “I’ll get the stuff back within
three months — provided you fit me out
within a week. You see, Selenite will
cross Earth’s orbit Saturday next on its
way toward its aphelion. Every second
after that date handicaps us immensely.”
Ruoff reached for a radiophone,
spoke a few words in code which Gatti
did not understand. When he spoke
to Gatti again the strain seemed to ease
from his bearing and his face. “Get
loading,” he said. “It’s the biggest job
you ever faced, my boy.”
GATTI followed Admiral Ruoff to
the door and then hurried to his desk.
He had a few orders of his own to give,
but on the way across the room he no-
ticed Klein. His face was ashy, his
eyes dazed, and they dumbly stared at
him. Gatti slapped him upon the shoul-
der with the freedom among officers and
men of the far spaces. “Buck up and
make it snappy, old-timer. It’s a tough
timber, but we can break it. Leave
stores on decks if you must, but ride
’em in.”
Klein did not snap out of it. His
eyes followed Gatti solemnly. “Buck
up,” Gatti demanded. “Admiral Ruoff
doesn’t know you, Klein. You can’t
blame him for being careful.”
Suddenly the gloom vanished from
the saucer-blue eyes. Klein thrust a
sturdy thumb toward the flag in his but-
tonhole. “I be vit you, commander,” he
said. “Ven I do say it myself, he got
a funny name himself, vot?”
Gatti wheeled to halt a passing of-
ficer, tall and towering, almost as tall
as Klein. “Lieutenant Pike,” he called.
Pike wheeled, clicked to attention.
He faced Gatti, but his eyes focused a
bit to the left of him.
“This way, lieutenant.” Gatti touched
him. “Follow to my desk, I want to
talk with you. We’re off to Selenite
within a week. It’ll be hell leaving you,
but ”
Pike slowly turned his face toward
Gatti’s voice. He stood a moment star-
ing, the unseeing stare of the blind,
waiting for Gatti to finish a sentence he
hardly knew how to complete. He
smiled then, the sure, contagious smile
of a man who knows how to win one
over to his side. “Not this time, com-
mander; my eyes are clearing. In a
week I’ll be able to read a chart.”
Still Gatti had no more to say.
There was a chance that Pike’s eyes
might clear. The ship’s doctor had
62
ASTOUNDING STORIES
hoped for them to do so before now.
It would be hard going without Pike.
He had never done it before. He didn’t
like to think of it.
“Klein,” he said, “get Kansas City.
Stock liquid oxygen from Kulon’s plant
only.”
FEVERISHLY the week passed.
Nightly came the warning that America
was besieged. Distant detonations,
thunderous rumblings, searchlights
sweeping the clouds. Saturday came
and Ruoff made good his implied prom-
ise. The Skyhazvk was towed to the
take-off rails. Long, slender, and shin-
ing, she angled with her nose at the dis-
tant sky.
The last man came aboard at sun-
down. The last visitor left at dark,
leaving the rocket yard empty except for
the monster soon to quit the Earth.
Gatti sat at the controls, waiting the
signal which must soon be coming. His
eyes searched the wounded blackness of
a cloudy sky as a siren warned the
darkened city of gas attack. Even
within the ship he felt the shake of man-
made thunder, and then high against the
clouds burst a ghastly flare of flame
which ripped the night as it plunged
earthward.
“Cracked him up,” Gatti growled to
Klein. Klein leaned forward to search
the heavens. A faint halo from the
burning plane lighted his profile. Out
in the field guide lights bloomed green
and red — the signal from aerial observa-
tion that all was clear. With a scowl
toward the enemy east, Gatti pressed
signal for clearance. Waited, listening
to the sirens beyond the yard warning
away any chance wanderer from the
backwash of air. Then an answering
clear. He closed the switch.
Earth with its battlefields, its blood
and destruction, dropped from under him
as the explosion of oxygenized gasoline
thundered like a tornado from the ro-
tary exhausts. Across farmlands and
cities, hills and rivers, the Skyhawk
rushed, leaving them to primal night or
the stabbing flares of intense anxiety.
She cast behind the hostile zone of scout
planes, the higher lanes of sealed cruis-
ers and stratosphere, and entered a dead,
flat zone of silence which signaled es-
cape from Earth’s envelope of air.
One, two, four, five miles per second
the velocity needle passed. Already she
was breaking Earth’s pull. The belt
which snugged Gatti to the pilot’s seat,
strained at its buckles, straps and pads
dragged at his abdomen and shoulders,
and still he notched her up, faster,
faster.
Pike, in the co-pilot seat, sat with a
tight, complacent grin. He could not
yet read chart, but his eyes were clear-
ing, and the specialist at St. Louis had
assured them he would be able to see
much better very soon. Gatti was glad
to have him there. Half blind, Pike was
better than any mate he could find. His
big strength, his cool courage, and his
genius for charting made him most
necessary on this decisive flight.
Gatti smiled at him cheerfully; there
wasn’t an enemy rocket around. From
under the ship, the black Earth was fall-
ing into the gulf of emptiness which
spread to the distant stars. Swiftly it
shrank into itself until it seemed a mon-
strous umbrella of darkness against the
sky, until it bore a flush along its east-
ern limb, a crescent of sunlight thin as
a golden line, that widened steadily un-
der the tangent of the Skyhawk’ s flight.
EARTH waxed full. She shrank
away, until she was only a ruddy disk
smaller than Luna had seemed from
Earth, and Luna herself smaller than
one of the golden spheres above a
pawnbroker’s museum.
Vacancy seized the Skyhawk and held
her in suspension unmoved by the vibrat-
ing furor of redoubling velocities, as
though constant acceleration exhausted
itself upon an invisible treadmill. Over-
DOOMED BY THE PLANETOID
63
head and beneath blazed unmultiplied
suns, startlingly magnificent.
Twenty hours those three sat ignor-
ing the strain of safety belts, the aching
tension of constant alertness. Once
Klein attempted to break away from
his seat, but Gatti commanded him back.
Klein knew not the power of the force
he would defy. Never had the Skyhawk
bounded into space at the pace she now
attempted.
There was a buzz of phones. Gatti
answered, “Shut down the acceleration
lever.” The strain eased from the belts,
and, as weight fell away, Gatti cut in
the switch which revolved the ship to
give artificial gravitation. Tke routine
of ship life began. The Skyhawk was
in her old element.
Gatti felt the familiar lure of bright
ports all around him, worlds upon
worlds, each with its own phenomena,
its own seas, gases, continents and ad-
ventures. He was a space alien again,
faring far from Earth, which slowly ro-
tated its continents to the Sun with di-
vine impartiality. Except for the blood-
shed upon it, he could have dropped its
hates and its anxieties into the gulf
wherein it spun. As it was, he had a
duty which magnified that planet beyond
the vastness of all the worlds around
him, which kept his heart tight, his head
cool, and his hands firm upon the con-
trols before him.
Hours passed into days, into weeks,
with that changeless protraction known
only to a ship hung in space. Time was
dead, space and eternity endlessly be-
calmed. The white sun streaked around
and around to the turn of the ship with
spark ribbons of stars spreading from
it. But, in the periscope which brought
a view from the nose of the ship, the
Sun stood still and no star moved, even
to the hands of the chronometer.
Then came the exciting day when
Gatti discovered a blinking point of light
in the binocular telescopes. It was tiny
as a speck of dust, but glittered like a
bit of the blinding Sun. He pushed
back from the telescopes and signaled
Pike. Pike nodded.
“I caught it while you were asleep.
We’ll contact it to the nth point of your
calculations,” Gatti said.
“Thank Heaven for that,” Pike said
fervently.
“Now you go back to sleep,” Gatti
ordered. “I’ll carry on.”
When Pike was gone Gatti watched
the far-off speck of brilliance for a while,
then he swung the lenses about to cover
that sector of the heavens where Earth
glowed red and far-away. It seemed
tragically small and disrupted when he
remembered the thunder of its quarrels
and the hatreds of its peoples. Sud-
denly he felt a compassion for all flesh,
for the suffering, dying races imprisoned
to that star by the very breath of life
Why were they created so? Why had
the hand which so prodigally broad-
cast worlds to infinite spaces, impris-
oned intelligence to a tiny planet with
an envelope of air?
That question was not even debated
upon just then, for he became aware of
an almost invisible thing plowing across
the heavens. He pressed his eyes hard
against the binoculars. That unseen
thing was moving swiftly, eclipsing far-
off constellations like a nebulous fish.
He pressed a button, broadcast an or-
der into the hook-up. Instantly the
whole ship came alive. There was a
new pulse in the engine room, a quaver-
ing vibration to the metal walls. The
hands of the accelerator dial crept for-
ward again, notching up precarious
velocities.
Pike strode in. “What’s up, com-
mander ?”
“Pursued,” Gatti said cryptically.
“Tipped off to us,” Pike rumbled as
he pressed his eyes to the telescopes.
“Can’t make it out.” He frowned,
blinking hard to clear the mist still left
in his eyes.
Gatti took the binoculars. “Great
64
ASTOUNDING STORIES
Lord !” he cried in amazement. “What
speed’s in that ship. We can’t outrun
them. We’ve got to stop and fight,
even if Selenite gains a month. There’s
treason somewhere, Pike. That ship
knows we’re after the asteroid.”
III.
THE SHIP cleared rapidly into
something to be seen rather than out-
lined. Gatti swung his binoculars again
on Selenite, flying ahead like the tail
light of a midnight plane. Carefully he
measured the velocity of the pursuing
ship and then the distance still remain-
ing between the planetoid. He shook
his head and gave up hope of reaching
Selenite ahead of the pursuer. He had
to stand by to fight, and a fight was the
one thing he could not afford.
The Skyhawk carried no guns except
small arms within the ship. The pur-
suer was undoubtedly armed for any
kind of space attack. Gatti remembered
that Admiral Ruoff had told him that
such ships had left every American
space warrior derelict in the void. The
Skyhazvk was not built for war. She
was a sky cruiser only.
Every second now revealed that Gatti
must not only defend himself against
gunfire, but against supervelocity. The
enemy fairly bounded with new power,
like a great fish sighting a meal. By
her moves, Gatti recognized her. She
had a reputation, this Shark, the dread
queen of the enemy fleet.
“Man space suits!” Gatti cried as
she swelled from the dusky vacuum.
There was instant activity inside the
Skyhawk. That order was only given
in times of extreme peril to the ship.
The blue-gray monster swelled until
she was but a few miles out. Her
course was puzzling. She was at least
twenty miles off its course, and angling
toward Selenite as if ignoring Gatti
after all. Was she trying to beat him
at his own game? Had some one also
betrayed the secret of the blinding ema-
nations ?
He closed his eyes as though to sense
the groping blindness such a cargo
would scatter into American trenches.
If the Shark passed he could never over-
take her! He pushed aside the scatter
of small figures he had made in his cal-
culations. Whatever his chances in a
fight, he couldn’t risk that ship getting
past.
“I believe they're after Selenite,” he
said, as calmly as though he did not
know the feeling it must arouse aboard.
“Double at controls, Pike,” he ordered,
and pressed a button which would
broadcast his orders. “Crowd every-
thing, boys. Gas up engines if you rip
them open. All hands stand by with
grenades for boarding her. We’re wad-
ing in.”
Pike snugged himself into the belts.
Gatti swung the rudder until the tail fin
leaned far into the discharging gases.
Midspace the Skyhawk swept about,
nosing over into the path of the on-
coming Shark.
With that turn from pursuit of the
planetoid, Selenite swept on beyond the
power of the binoculars, melting into
distance which the Skyhawk now could
not hope to regain for many weeks. It
was tough to watch her going, but the
Shark was more important even than
weeks of delay. Smoothly she glided
across the emptiness around her, her
portholes all alight like some brutish,
luminous monster of the deep. She was
not spinning, having evidently dis-
covered some artificial gravity.
Gatti shot his ship across her bow
like a cannon shell. He hoped his defi-
ance would irritate her. If her com-
mander could forgo a whack at his last
hated rival in space, all was lost. For
a few seconds it seemed the Shark would
go past. Gatti was within ten miles of
her nose when guns bristled from their
nests in her sides, and an instant later
a fleet of smoke puffs burst from their
AST-4
DOOMED BY THE PLANETOID
65
muzzles. Silent, hurtling shells shot to-
ward the Skyhawk, but Gatti was ex-
pecting them, and had pushed far down
on his stick. Neatly, as a hawk dips
before a stone, the Skyhawk dipped
from the discharge, and straightened out
again.
A GRIM SMILE worked into Gat-
ti ’s face as he swung about with the
Shark in pursuit. If he could outma-
neuver her he might some way put his
crew aboard and rip her open to the
suck of the void.
In his view plate he caught a glimpse
of the square face of the enemy pilot,
and the deep-set eyes fixed unrelentingly
upon his ship. Domineering eyes, they
were, certain there would be little work
in crushing this eight-year-old space
rover.
Gatti pushed ahead as the Shark
Then, before an order could be shouted, the ship was
into them, tearing — drilling
AST— 5
ASTOUNDING STORIES
66
crowded in. Five miles, four, two, the
electric eye recorded the distance be-
tween them. Then guns bristled again,
this time for a close-up volley that would
be impossible to avoid. But Gatti had
another card up his sleeve. This time
he rammed down the gravity lever un-
til it hit .the boards. Beyond the port-
holes the whirling stars began a mad
stampede which sent a blur of fire flow-
ing across the glass. Only in the peri-
scope could anything be seen, and even
there the Shark spun dizzily in a nar-
row orbit around his ship.
Centrifugal force, like an invisible
hand, pushed Gatti’s head hard down
into his shoulders until it seemed his
backbone would break. The instrument
board melted away in a haze as the
blood drained from his head, and the in-
dicator swept into six, seven, eight, nine,
ten gravity ! Something screeched
against the slick alloy of the outer hull,
and shells burst, to send their splinters
ricocheting far out into a million tiny
asteroids, from the force of the spinning
metal.
Cutting gravity, Gatti pressed his
dizzy eyes to the periscope. He couldn’t
see a thing, but as he blinked deter-
minedly at the haze, his head cleared
and the Shark appeared again as some-
thing in a mist.
The red face at the controls was
pressed hard against the observation
glass, and the deep-set eyes were now
burning like those of a famished wolf.
The domineering snarl at the corners of
the heavy mouth still sneered, but the
cold assurance in the eyes had turned to
an obstinate glare.
Gatti waited, hand on lever, ready to
repeat the stunning gravity, but the
Shark nested her guns. “What’s up?”
he frowned. Had the Shark decided
that he wasn't worth the delay? Was
she streaking off after Selenite, leaving
him to tag helplessly on her tail?
But the Shark did not leave. Some
miles out, she looped back. Slowly she
came, as though creeping in on him.
From her nose projected an astonish-
ingly long drill of metal, which revolved
so fast its bit blurred in the sunlight.
It was evident she could drain his air
with one push of that drill into his hull.
This time even multiplied gravity would
give no protection. A loop might beat
one of her deliberate charges, even two,
but in the end the Shark would push
her drill against his hull to drain his air.
All the crew were in air suits except
Gatti, and he had no time to get one.
His hands were busy with levers, his
feet tensed at the double set of pedals.
Already the Shark was on his tail, push-
ing up velocity as she caught his stride.
He let her crowd in until she almost
touched him and then he arced over, so
tightly that the beet-red face craned
backward with wide-open mouth. He
cut his arc close, pinching down until
his landing gear scarce cleared the fin-
like tail as he glided, back-volleying to
snug upon the blue-gray metal of the
enormous back. The Shark leaped and
rolled like a terrified horse. The next
few moments she went through all the
gyrations of an outlaw bronc at its first
feel of leather. Gatti cut in a vertical
charge which clamped him fast, while
the smaller ship rode high, wide and
handsome.
He saved a lurch from her tail with
a burst of power, countered a lurch
down the side with a veer of his rudder,
fought back a nose slide by another back
volley, watching and countering as the
Shark maneuvered to shake him, and
his men gathered metal cutters and
rushed for the locks. Every second was
vital. With cutting jets, a dozen men
could paralyze the Shark and leave her
derelict.
Not a man reached an air lock. Gatti
halted them with a broadcast which
saved their lives. With a suddenness
that had almost taken his breath, the
Shark was gone, and only space and
stars, light years away, were below him.
DOOMED BY THE PLANETOID
67
*
A marvelous ship, that Shark, she
had dropped so quickly even the pres-
sure of the Skyhawk’s discharge could
not hold against her. Then, before he
could shout his order and locate her in
the view plates, she was into him, tear-
ing at his hull.
With air screaming from her hold,
the Skyhawk tried a loop. The Shark
turned its ugly head and drew in the
drill. Without so much as a wait to
take off the crew as prisoners, she
streaked off toward Selenite, leaving
them to the insensate mercies of the
void.
IV.
GATTI watched her go, ignoring the
gongs which broke into alarm, the bang
of doors sucked shut in the draughts,
the hurrying men brisk in their trained
stride of military emergency. He felt
the pulse of the engines die away, the
sharp quickening of his breath, with only
one thought. He had failed. The
Shark was gone.
Feathery flakes of snow fell from the
chilling vapors of his breath. He felt a
hand upon his shoulder, then a helmet
was pushed down over his head. He
broke from his mood and pushed him-
self out of his chair to take the air suit
Klein had brought him. Briskly he
pulled into it and lugged down the hel-
met, then plugged in connections which
put him in touch with his men.
Air pressure in the pilot room was
already down to fourteen. The instru-
ment board disclosed the wound to be
in the engine room.
Smallwood was already at the phones,
calling him. “Sealed, O. K.,” he ad-
vised. That meant the compartment was
isolated automatically from the rest of
the ship. But it could not be aban-
doned. To get anywhere, engines must
be started again.
“Can you get plates over the wound ?’
Gatti demanded. There was some delay.
Smallwood came back. “There are
ten in this compartment. They are half-
inch plates. Ought to hold, but we can’t
seal them down in here.”
“Do the best you can,” Gatti encour-
aged. “Ring for air when you’re
through. If you can’t calk her tight,
we’ll get you out through the hull.”
He swept the chart before him and
scanned the empty blue — millions on
millions of miles around the white line
of his course. Frowning, he shook his
head. Leakage through the metal sheets
Smallwood was riveting over the wound
would drain every cylinder of liquid
oxygen long before he could hope to
follow on to Selenite, even if he could
get the engines going evenly.
He slipped off his helmet. Suddenly
it seemed to weigh him down, and since
the engine room was sealed off there
was no need of it in the pilot room. He
glared across at Pike, who had taken off
his own helmet.
“Earth ?” Pike ventured.
Gatti shook his head. “Could you,
Pike, without Selenite, even if we make
repairs?”
“Ahead, then?”
Gatti shrugged. “What use? We
couldn’t last three weeks leaking be-
tween plates, and we haven’t a chance
to seal them tight in mid-space. Flux
won’t flow without gravity, and men
can’t stick outside with the ship turning.
The Shark knew that when she left us
to our own.”
He fixed his dividers upon the tiny
dots which marked the orbit of Selenite,
and then he stretched them to bridge a
gap to a tiny triangular flag stuck with
a pin into another series of dots which
marked the orbit of the planetoid Rein-
muth. With that distance as a radius,
he laid it to his scale of miles.
For a while he calculated silently, lay-
ing the slower velocity of Reinmuth
against that of Selenite as it followed
on its heels in a slightly different plane.
68
ASTOUNDING STORIES
Finally he reached for the phones and
buzzed the engine room. “When those
plates are placed, Smallwood, get your
engines purring. We’ll give you air if
you’ll get all you can out of them.
Maybe it’ll pep you up to know Rein-
muth is swinging in on us only five hun-
dred thousand miles out!”
Reinmuth would not make the land-
ing Gatti could have wished. Not more
than three miles in diameter, a man
upon it would have so little weight he
might push himself off its surface for-
ever with a careless kick. But it would
make a possible dry dock for putting
outside plates over the hole. Any grav-
ity was better than none. Of course,
the flux would ooze rather than pour,
and he did not know how the composi-
tion would act in vacuum when forced
between the metal plates, but he hoped it
would seal air tight.
For ten days Smallwood made good
at the engines. And the Sky hawk cut
across the orbit of Selenite to intercept
its sister planetoid. At the end of those
ten days she came in sight, tiny as a
speck of floating dust. In another half
hour he closed in swiftly and then
slowed rotation for landing.
Reinmuth proved to be a big lump
of metal, cracked and fissured as though
it had been molded to the seams and
chasms of a rocky cavern. Probably it
had been blown out intact when the
planet from which it had been born was
torn apart. That it had neither atmos-
phere nor water was plainly revealed in
the clarity of its horizons, and in the
sharpness of sunlight and shadow.
All hands were immediately put to
the tedious task of sealing the wound.
Seven welders and helpers slid through
the air locks, Gatti with them, taking
startling strides, diving in and out of
obliterating shadows. Klein trailed
Gatti, his round blue eyes very sober
under the helmet glass. Pike remained
inside to direct the work in the engine
room.
THE WOUND proved to be quite
a problem. Flux froze over cavities and
would not filter far between the metal
plates. Air from the hose line pushed
the flux through unevenly and left the
compound full of tiny holes. The trou-
ble was finally overcome by rolling the
ship over to rest upon the riveted plates,
while two men gently rocked the ship
back and forth to spread the cement
smoothly under its pressure.
Days slipped around the ship’s chro-
nometer before she was vacuum tight
again, then air was valved into the en-
gine room and Gatti had time to puzzle
out some means of turning defeat to
victory. Death reigned everywhere be-
yond the narrow diameter of metal and
glass — death in unknown and dread
forms. Was there no way to make it
his ally ? Over and over he turned that
thought as he lay on a bench which
flanked one side of the control room.
Klein came into the room, hung close
around, pottering about with a broom,
stopping now and then as though about
to say something, then changing his
mind. Evidently there was something
troubling him.
“Tired, old space scout ?” Gatti spoke
soothingly.
Klein moved away. What he would
have said he swallowed in a sullen
growl. His ludicrous efforts at sweep-
ing where gravitation was near a mini-
mum brought a humorous twinkle into
Gatti’s eyes, but it was gone as quickly
as it had risen. He left the bench and
went back to his charts. The Shark
must not pass. Somehow he had to
wrest that cargo from her when she
came streaking back toward Earth.
Failing that, he must, at least, stop her
for keeps.
Klein halted at his elbow, leaned hesi-
tatingly, his face solemn.
“What’s the trouble?” Gatti insisted.
“Might just as well,” Klein rumbled,
and stopped to clear his throat. “Ven
you go back, commander? I’d say best
DOOMED BY THE PLANETOID
69
you not vait. Dot Shark, by damn, com-
mander, ven she vant she put a bomb
in our belly.”
“What are you trying to say?” Gatti
scowled, astonished. Surely the void
hadn’t touched that calm, phlegmatic
mind at last. Klein was trying some
kind of queer kidding. He was one
man Gatti believed would never crack
to the mood of the void, and yet there
was no humor in those eyes, not even a
hint of it. And yet it was hard to be-
lieve that Klein was afraid. There was
too much to the contrary.
“Not for myself, commander,” Klein
said. “Ven I do say it myself, it is the
Skyhawk and you, yourself, vot?”
Gatti took up a pencil, rechecked the
figure he had been making. There
would be linear velocity of Reinmuth to
aid him in the new plan he had in mind.
There could be immediate get-away, for
Reinmuth had little clutch on the ship.
He rang for Pike. Pike came, big,
dauntless, assuring, his eyes already
clear. The mental miasma sown by the
close-pressing vacuum, the intense star-
light, the eerie weightlessness, made no
inroad into his morals. It was good to
have him aboard.
“Ready for business?” Gatti de-
manded.
“All ready, sir.”
“How are the men?”
“Ready, sir, but very tired.”
“Let them get some sleep, lieutenant
— ten hours of it.”
Pike saluted soberly, as though he
caught an omen of the dread thing that
was in Gatti’s mind.
A vacancy seemed to fill the pilot
room as Pike withdrew. Gatti’s im-
pulse was to call him back. Pike had
always shown unfailing courage, under-
standing comradeship, and for the mo-
ment Gatti felt himself walled in upon
a lonely peak of military command.
Every man’s life aboard depended upon
his present decision. He could share it
with Pike.
“Pike!” he called.
Pike wheeled at the door, but in that
moment Gatti had conquered his own
weakness. He had climbed his lonely
peak again. “Get some sleep yourself,
Pike.” He smiled defiantly at the im-
pulse that was within him. “Those are
orders — understand ?”
V.
TEN HOURS LATER, when Pike
came back into the pilot room he was
grinning boyishly. “Ten hours!” he
boomed. “Every man r’arin’ to go.”
“Assemble them on Number One —
every man of them.”
“That serious?”
“That serious, Pike.”
Ten minutes later Gatti strode on
deck Number One. The crew was al-
ready assembled, stern-faced, but eager.
Gatti regarded them soberly. They
were an exceptional lot for any man to
command: Reinhardt, Smallwood, Sara-
noff, Andrews, O’Kane, Duboise, and
so on down the ranks — the very cream
skimmed from the daring of the world.
He had roughed it with most of them
on weird frontiers of far-off worlds,
when there had been no military formal-
ity between them.
“Men,” he began curtly, “our country
has never been disappointed in us. We
have always accomplished in every par-
ticular whatever task she has assigned.
Until now our record has known no
admission of failure. We cannot now
break that record to return with excuses
in our hands. However we have failed
so far, however we fall short of the
real purpose of this trip, there is one
thing left for us to do to close out our
careers in keeping with our code. The
Shark must not pass. As your com-
manding officer, I give you death worthy
70
ASTOUNDING STORIES
of space traditions. When the Shark
appears we will crash her head-on !”
For a moment there was a dead hush
upon the deck, but no eye fell. Each
man met silently and courageously his
own individual desire to live. Each
faced with like fortitude their separate
ideas of impending oblivion, or future
existence. The stillness of the great
void beyond the glass was tight within
the ship, but Gatti knew his men. That
was their first response in accepting his
plan.
It was their mute rise to impending
annihilation. But it was soon broken by
some deep-voiced fellow in the second
rank — a bellowing whoop which raised
echoes down the walls. It was their old
defiant yell of many an exciting charge.
Another throat took it up and another,
till the walls rang and the roar of it
hurt the ears, though, the glassed -off
void beneath their feet refused it.
Not one of those men was acting nor-
mally, and they knew they were not.
There were no savage ears to quake
before its volume, only the patient void
waiting beyond the glass from which
every eye was averted. Patiently it
waited, as they shouted it down, staring
in with its million eyes and its wordless
assurance, waitihg to suck breath from
those shouting throats, crystallize blood
and flesh, held by only that thin wall
of glass they themselves were ordered to
break down.
And they were shouting down its
grim silence, the endless bulk of it as
it spread itself upon the ship, fanning
the eager fires of enthusiastic life to defy
the hollow thing around them.
Gatti left them as they shouted. He
was shocked and a little thrilled by the
outburst. Somehow it materialized the
menace which stalked every ship in
space, but it also aroused remembrance
of glamorous days to be lived no more.
On his way to the pilot room he
heard a whisper of steps behind him.
Klein, sober-eyed, grasped his hand.
“Ven you come by the ship alive, com-
mander, think of me, von’t you please,
in the far places — space comrades, vot?”
Gatti pressed the big hand. “Right,
old space scout. That’s the idea.” He
knew there wasn't a chance for any of
them to survive the crashing velocity of
those two space ships at head-on, but
why destroy Klein’s hope?
KLEIN followed him on into the
pilot room. He seemed uneasy, as
though there was something battling in
his mind. Gatti wondered at that. It
could not be fear — Klein had never
shown that he knew what fear was.
Still, all other perils Klein had charged
into had been real, enemies he could
fight. Was he teetering upon the edge
of void madness? In any case, the best
medicine for him was activity, any ac-
tivity that would keep him occupied.
“Set flags in the salon,” he ordered,
“then go up and help pack explosives in
the nose compartment.”
Klein stood close beside him. For a
moment he made no move, but stood
blinking as though he was ready to
break.
“Make it snappy.” Gatti pulled open
the flag cabinet and thrust a bundle of
flags toward his hands. But Klein, vet-
eran of space, who had stood up under
every known test of space men and car-
ried out the most trivial order with
promptness and care, turned abruptly
and ran down the corridor, leaving Gatti
standing with the bundle of flags and a
strained anxiety in his heart.
There was no time to chase a void-
struck man, even when that man was
dear old Klein. Any moment the Shark
might break into view, and Gatti wanted
to be at the controls when the crash
came.
Half an hour later Pike came in.
“Seen Klein?” he asked. “He can give
us a hand if it’s O. K. with you.”
DOOMED BY THE PLANETOID
71
"And luck to you, commander,” he rumbled as he
swung Gatti out
“Better call Andrews,” Gatti said.
“Klein’s too busy.” He thought it best
not to let even Pike know Klein had
gone under.
Three hours later the Shark had still
not appeared. Klein had not come back
into the pilot room, and casual inquiry
brought no information as to his where-
abouts. Void-struck men had been
known to do queer and dangerous
things. Reluctantly, Gatti ordered a
search.
Three men searched the vessel, upper
deck to lower hold, but Klein was not
to be found. That meant he had gone
out upon the planetoid. Through the
big view plates Gatti searched the sun-
lighted crags of frozen metal. Shadow
was blacker than night. Klein could
hide before his very eyes. From every
72
ASTOUNDING STORIES
promontory and in every crevice the
pools and lakes of shadow erased every
outline within them.
“Shall we search the planetoid?” Pike
asked.
The zero hour was surely very close
by then. Gatti shook his head. Klein’s
grave must be Reinmuth, though Gatti
hated to leave him to its lonely route
around the sun. What a grave Rein-
muth was, like Mahomet’s coffin, float-
ing forever on nothing at all. How
bleak and barren and lonely, suspended
in emptiness where even the lowest form
of life could never exist. It was har-
rowing to leave Klein there, and yet,
after all, what difference?
The zero hour was indeed close. Far
off a vague form moved to eclipse a
handful of stars. Gatti ’s lips came tight.
Despite his self-control, his pulse quick-
ened and his breath came quick and
short. There she came, swelling with
amazing rapidity soon after she broke
into view. He pressed a button and
then another.
Alarms rang out above and below, on
deck, through corridors, muffled far
down in the bowels of the ship. Pike
pushed into his seat and snugged down
his belts, looking stiffly ahead.
The Shark swelled quickly to flood
the lenses and crossed the deadline at
which the electric eye was set to trip
the discharge lever.
Those of the crew that were in sight
stood grimly at their posts. There was
now no time for dread, or defiance to
flow from the frozen tension those clam-
orous bells had thrown upon every man
aboard.
AS the lever dropped, a shudder
shook the ship. It was startling, for the
Sky hawk should have zoomed away as
lightly as a bird from a twig.
The Shark filled the periscope and
then the floor windows underfoot.
Automatically the controls raised the
Sky hawk’s discharge and the shudder
of her framework seemed strong enough
to rip her apart.
The Shark filled to her monstrous
size and then shrank as quickly as she
had swelled, dwindling into a tiny minia-
ture of her enormous bulk, which nar-
rowed until it was lost in the dusky
emptiness and only the fading and
brightening of distant constellations re-
vealed her presence in the hollow depths
of space.
Gatti cut power down to save his
ship. There had been no crash, and
the Shark was gone. Something heart-
breaking was wrong. The reaction was
insufferable, a fizzling denouement he
knew not how to face. He could not
go down to Earth with his failure in his
hands.
Alarms were still ringing for the take-
off, less than a minute old. Power was
off again, the ship silent and defeated.
What was wrong? It had seemed that
an invisible hand from the sky had
reached down to hold them back. That
couldn’t be. Something tangible had
held his ship. What was it?
One glance through the floor win-
dows confirmed his surmise that the ship
was still aground, and yet, that in itself
was more puzzling than had he found
her limping along through space. Any
man aboard could have lifted her from
Reinmuth with an upthrust arm !
A phone rang. Pike slid from his
seat and hurried away. Gatti cautiously
gunned her up and cut the rudder
around for a hard swing to work away
from anything that could have fouled
her. The ship shivered and shuddered,
but he persistently gunned her up,
watching the velocity dial. The needle
was edging forward from the point it
had hovered since landing.
His struggle was adding a tiny bit
to the velocity of the planetoid, and yet
she was still there under his keel, swing-
ing this way and that, to be sure, but
close under him. unshakeable. His eye
covered the board, the indicator set
DOOMED BY THE PLANETOID
73
against the Sun was changing, very lit-
tle to be sure, but enough to disclose a
new direction of the planetoid’s velocity.
Pike came soaring in, his eyes blaz-
ing.
“We’re fouled on the planetoid,”
Gatti growled at him. “Get men out-
side and find what it is.”
“Klein!” Pike bellowed. “The yel-
low, double-dealing Look at the
anchor chain !”
Gatti swung the view plate to cover
it. The slight change in the ship’s direc-
tion put sunlight along the big chain
which should have been snugged upon
its reel. Now it was tightly stretched
from anchor eye down to a pool of inky
shadow under the ship. Certainly some
one had fouled it into a crevice of the
metal.
Had Klein? Gatti refused the idea.
Klein wasn’t yellow, and this wasn’t^ the
work of a void-struck man. Void-
struck men broke things up, tore off
their helmets to the suck of space, did
many senseless, frenzied things, but this
was a coward’s trick, the act of a man
who was afraid to die, and Klein had
never been afraid to die. Later he was
convinced of this conclusion when it was
reported that the anchor was not only
fouled in the crevice, but was fused in
with flux from the ship.
TO Pike’s repeated accusations, Gatti
shook his head positively. “There’s
something to this we don’t understand,
Pike. Klein may be anything that takes
bravery and nerve, but he isn’t yellow.”
“A spy, then,” Pike insisted.
Again Gatti shook his head. “We’ve
lived together more than eight years.
We have been so long in the void that
countries are inconsequential alongside
the staggering boundaries of space.
Klein would have died for either of us,
and he had never shown the semblance
of disloyalty. Why, Pike, are you sug-
gesting Klein would throw down on you
and me? Where’s your loyalty, your-
self, to fall for circumstantial evidence
of this sort?”
“Smallwood saw him with the flux
barrel, commander,” Pike said with
much reserve. “I hate to believe it,
Heaven knows, but what else can we
believe? He’s not only yellow, but he’s
smeared it over our ship !”
Gatti frowned and stared out into the
dusky void. It was hard to believe, so
far off Earth seemed, like an alien thing,
like a tiny, unimportant, bloody star lost
from them through seven million miles
of emptiness. And yet wasn’t he doing
the very thing he had denied in Klein,
counting those atomic boundaries which
bred race prejudice and national jeal-
ousies, important enough to give his
very life for them?
“But my case is different,” he assured
himself, and in a way he knew he was
right. America did stand for more than
race prejudice, but was race prejudice
alone the factor which sent millions of
peace-loving men out to destroy in the
name of war ? On either side could race
prejudice or national jealousy long en-
dure if it was not backed by some taste
for blood within a man himself?
Since the Shark was hopelessly gone,
Gatti ordered Klein brought in. Ten
hours the whole crew hunted. Intense
shadows and many fissures in the sur-
face of the planetoid gave the hunted
man every advantage. As long as he
chose, he could probably elude them
where flight was silent, invisible, and
easily accomplished, and pursuers could
be seen at a distance as they crossed the
sunlighted table lands.
The anchor chain was fused in sol-
idly. Rather then release it from the
ship and abandon it, Gatti tried again
to drag it free. As he pulled he noticed
the Sun needle moving again. It gained
a degree, and then another as he drove
at an arc from the linear velocity. Rein-
muth was obeying a power higher than
natural law ! To the tug of the Sky-
hawk it plowed about into a loop which
74
ASTOUNDING STORIES
set it back toward the Sun and the
ruddy Earth star which swung between.
With the Sun on the Skyhawk’s nose,
Gatti turned the control over to Pike.
Strain was easing away and the shud-
der in the hull dying even as power
was stepped up and up. Now he could
control the planetoid, but nearer the
Earth that would be out of the question.
Before him was an intricate calcula-
tion in which must be no error in all
its ramifications which concerned veloc-
ity, gravity and mass. Earth, too, was
out of Reinmuth’s plane, and Earth ro-
tated on its axis, swung around the
Moon, rushed along its orbit at eighteen
and six tenth miles per second ! An
astounding maze of factors which even
Gatti might check and recheck with care.
VI.
SIX DAYS PASSED, space-frozen
and unending to every one aboard the
Skyhawk. Gatti ate and slept at the
controls. Pike sat beside him con-
stantly, taking his turn with new opti-
mism now that there was hope ahead.
Duboise and Saranoff discovered
Klein entrenched in a cavern of metal
from which only a bomb could dislodge
him. Gatti ordered him left alone, but
cautioned the crew to watch for an op-
portunity to get him back within the
ship. Stubbornly, he held to the idea
that if he could talk with Klein there
would be some explanation that would
clear the accusation against him, though
not even Pike supported him in this
hope.
Soon Earth swelled perceptibly, grow-
ing swiftly into a bright moon with dark
continents and shining oceans rotating
across its fleeced face. As gravity dou-
bled and redoubled, Reinmuth snarled
and snapped at the anchor chain as
though rebellious of any restraint. Soon
she weighed a million tons, and the
Skyhawk lost any possible control of
her.
From out of cloud fleece moved the
Western Hemisphere, with the familiar
map of North America spread between
oceans like the page of a geography. It
raised a throb in Gatti’s heart. What
was the story of the battle going on upon
that tranquil darkness? Was that tiny
smear of land beyond the heel of Florida
still vomiting its mechanical destroyers ?
It seemed too small to be the deadly
menace it was to the great continent
spread beyond it. It seemed almost
small enough to be crunched out with
the end of a thumb. And yet every re-
source of the advanced civilization upon
the continent had failed to halt the rav-
ages from that tiny base. Could Gatti,
with this rock in his sling, like David
faring against the Philistines, sink his
pebble into the armored head?
He remembered a big hole in the
western part of the United States, near
Winslow, Arizona. Once he had climbed
to the lip of it, crunching the finely
powdered rock that had been blasted up
from the bowels of the Earth, then he
had talked to engineers who had tried
to locate the meteor that had caused the
wound. That meteor was small com-
pared with the one he had slung toward
the . enemy base.
He smiled grimly, remembering the
stories he had heard of the meteor of
the Siberian wastes. It had wrecked a
forest and uprooted trees for fifty miles
around. Reinmuth was a bombshell in-
deed, heaving down to shake the very
foundations of the whole island.
She seemed eager for her feast of
chaos, pulling the velocity needle up and
up as the Earth swelled. Gatti knew it
was time to cut loose if he wished to
save his ship from the burning fingers
of the atmosphere, and yet he was loath
to leave Klein without a word, without
some sign that friendship, after all, was
the strongest thing in a loyal man.
“I’ll go after him,” he decided aloud.
“He’ll come when I talk with him.”
“Right, sir,” Pike barked, then in a
DOOMED BY THE PLANETOID
75
softer tone. “Why not forget him, Gatti ?
Good Lord, it’s the best way out for
him.”
Gatti shook his head stubbornly.
“Treachery isn’t in Klein’s make-up,
Pike.”
“Make any one down there believe
that.” Pike indicated the great Earth
“They’ll tear him apart.”
“No one there must ever know.
Klein’s a hero to every boy in America.
And even this — this mistake has given
them victory !”
He switched on the visoscope, hoping
they were back in its radius of recep-
tion. He got Havana as in a mist, and
then the rocket yard, hemmed in by the
glistening metal roofs of munition
works. “Look!” He indicated the
screen. “We’ll not only crush out the
base, but bury the Selenite, too!”
THE HAZE from the screen cleared
and the Shark developed as a picture
develops in the dark room. Down the
gangway filed a line of gray-clad men,
to march through a narrow lane be-
tween overflowing thousands. A girl in
white was on the shoulders of the mob.
She must have been aboard. Gatti
dialed her into close-up. Her face was
flushed prettily. Her eyes were big and
haunting. In them was the crazed glit-
ter of hysteria.
Hysteria! The whole Earth seethed
with it. “Win the war” outsloganed ev-
ery grain of common sense. Forgotten
by that mob was every sober instinct,
and soon a new frenzy would seize them
as they scattered for self-preservation
before the blazing meteor from the void.
He snapped off the visoscope. He
must not think of them as men and
women, fellow beings chilled before the
fear of death. They were the enemy —
Heaven pity them.
He scanned Reinmuth again. Her
metal peaks still cast long shadows, but
now Earthshine brightened them. Form
and outline were visible now on almost
the whole surface, despite white sun-
shine on metal pinnacles and hills. In
the Earthshine something moved far
down in a canyon of the metal. It
mounted swiftly as though in flight and
alarm — half crouching like a great ape
rather than a man. Only his knowl-
edge that Klein was on the planetoid
made him certain that it was he. In
that crouch lurked a furtive, uncertain
fellow. Almost Gatti believed for the
time that devils could slip in and take
possession of a man.
' That was neither here nor there.
Klein was coming in. Gatti ordered
the guards at the air lock to be ready
to overpower him. Doubtless he would
be a bit crazed. But Klein was not
making toward the locks at all. In his
hand was a torch. Instead of trying to
save himself at the last moment, it
seemed he was intent on cutting loose
the ship.
Gatti pushed himself from the pilot
seat and swung to the air-suit locker.
It was plain to him by then what Klein
thought to do. Under them was the
United States. Across it Reinmuth
rushed on her calculated path to Cuba.
Klein, despite his long years in space,
knew little of the laws of motion. Evi-
dently he believed the Skyhawk was still
guiding the planetoid, and that he could
drop her short of her goal by cutting
the chain. He did not understand that
no longer did the tail wag the dog, but
the dog was very determinedly running
off with the tail.
Still determined to save him from a
fiery death, Gatti pulled on his air suit
and quickly lugged down the helmet.
He knew he was taking his own life
into Klein’s peril. “Cut loose in three
minutes, whether I’m back or not,” he
ordered Pike, and rushed down the cor-
ridor to the air lock.
He found Klein playing the fire jet
upon the big chain. He caught up his
phone line and plugged in to Klein’s
air suit.
76
ASTOUNDING STORIES
“Stop that, Klein. Throw down that
torch and come inside. We can still
fix this thing up, old space scout.”
“I von’t,” Klein shouted, averting his
eyes from the level gaze Gatti fixed upon
him. “Lay off me, commander. I kill
you, I vill !”
Through the glazed helmet Gatti
could see the blue fanatical eyes which
no longer seemed Klein’s. What eyes
they were, blazing with martyrdom.
They raised to meet Gatti’s as he waited
without a word, crumbling under Gat-
ti’s, softening as they squinted shut.
The heavy jaws compressed. The lips
quivered. “Commander, I kill you just
as veil. Keep hands off vit you !”
“Snap out of it,” Gatti said. “You
can’t stop Reinmuth now. Its velocity
is too great. Better come inside, Klein."
We’ll forget all this. After all, you
saved the day for us. I know the in-
stinct in you, the urge of a thousand
ancestors. Got plenty of it myself. It’s
one of those primitive things that slip
up on us. Come on, we’ll make the
crew believe it’s void madness.”
GATTI’S VOICE was persuasive,
but Klein was obdurate, and there was
no time for many words. Hooking his
toes behind a shard of metal, Gatti
clutched him quickly around the neck.
If he could get him inside, there would
be time to iron the thing out some way.
Klein swayed backward to his clutch,
but did not trail along lightly, as Gatti
expected. Klein, too, had learned that
trick of leverage. His big hands gripped
Gatti’s air suit about the middle, and the
movement was so swift and unexpected
Gatti found himself swung swiftly up
and held high above the giant’s head.
His toe hold had slipped, and he had
no power to resist.
For a moment he struggled above a
gulf of emptiness held in an unyielding
grip. Then a trembling came into the
clutching hands.
Gatti knew the desire which battled
between two loyalties, and felt sorry for
the man, even as space hung waiting for
the release of those fingers, even as the
arms bowed for the fling. As the heave
came, Gatti clutched at the helmet straps
of the man below him. The drop be-
yond was dizzy and repellent, and his
body writhed back from that swing as
his hands slipped down the straps.
Klein drew back for another try.
There was no time to fight, even if Gatti
had a chance. The ship must soon be
casting off. Gatti let go the straps.
Pike would wait for him if he fought
too long. The Skyhawk must save it-
self. He prepared to hold himself from
resistance when Klein swung out again.
But Klein did not swing. He goggled
up at him. There was a gap between
chain and ship, and Klein had seen that
g a P-
“Ve go down together, commander,”
he said. “How you should hate thot !”
His begging eyes searched Gatti’s
face, blinking hard. His voice softened,
almost the old familiar rumble Gatti
loved, “If I vass a man, maybe I vould
lissen to that old somethings in my
heart.”
Gatti had no reply. He was watching
the Skyhawk where she rode free, ready
for her loop back away from the ap-
proaching atmosphere. Those had been
his instructions.
“Good old ship,” he whispered softly.
“Be good to her, Pike.”
Then he saw Pike out on the catwalk,
outside the vessel, with a leg hooked
over the catwalk rail. Heaven knew
what Pike thought he could do.
Gatti twisted to free himself from
Klein. He wanted to part with his ship
standing like a man on his own two feet.
But Klein held on, gaping up at Pike
as he leaned far out over the rail.
Gatti scowled resentfully. The ship
mustn’t come down any further. Air
was already dense enough to whine
across the planetoid. It would soon be
a burning blast. The paw of it strength-
DOOMED BY THE PLANETOID
77
ened even as Pike leaned down, wig-
wagging frantically for him to leap.
“Go back,” Gatti signaled.
It was all right for a commander to
go down with his ship, but not for a
ship to go down with her commander.
Pike ought to know that.
“Excuse me, commander, fighting
you,” Klein rumbled softly. “Vill you
think, maybe sometimes, up there,
Venus, Mars, Luna maybe, fighting vit
you, vot? The old space scout and the
far places, vot?”
His slow mind seemed grappling with
two ideas, as he watched Pike’s frantic
signals. “And luck to you, com-
mander,” he rumbled as he crouched and
swung, heaving Gatti out across the
widening chasm between the meteor and
the ship.
IT WAS good to feel the Sky hawk
under his feet again, to feel the sweep-
ing soar of her as she followed the
planetoid the few moments it took Gatti
to get up to the controls.
At his post again, he looked down at
Klein. He was standing now at stiff
military attention, as though he had at
last cleared his honor with both ideals.
Ship and planetoid broke from each
other as Gatti swept into a loop.
Klein was facing him, and he could
either see, or imagine, the old dauntless
grin under the helmet glass. Suddenly,
as the ship arced, Klein’s hand left his
side and swept up to his face in the old
colorful salute of those who dare the
far spaces, and he seemed to grow taller
and a bit sublime as Gatti answered it.
Earth rushed back from the ship as
it had rushed in before. Reinmuth hur-
tled on, bearing its one stiffly erect in-
habitant. Klein dwarfed, disappeared.
A ruddy glow circled the dark edges of
the planetoid and quickly caught the
whole mass. A blinding burst of fire —
the whole horizon of Earth luminous
with incandescent vapors, and the great
Earth itself spreading under the white-
ness like a dark canopy.
Seconds of that blinding splendor — ■
then the crash ! No eye could measure
it, no imagination picture it. Far away,
where the Sky hawk rode, it was hard
to believe anything staggering had taken
place.
Only after many years, when Gatti
made a trip to the crater in memory of
the victory Klein had ignorantly given
him, did he begin to gather a real idea
of the destruction he had flung from
the sling of his space ship.
In the new peace of a new world, in
the mature altruism of science-minded
men and women, in an era which had
conquered the power-organized war and
the fear war, it was but natural that
Gatti should forget all but the best in
the man.
So, remembering, he surveyed the
great hole in which grew no tree, no
living thing, in which survived no scrap
of metal from the planetoid nor the
munitions of old enemies. He ventured
far down into the crater which flung its
farthest rim to the haze of distance a
hundred miles away, and he wondered
at the world’s advance, wondered more
at its old stupidity, at the laboring ages
of dark fear which held back, so long,
the rightful dominion of intelligent man.
And yet, in that chaotic tomb of old
enemies, and of his friend, something
that was apart from the brutish blood
lust of war, drew him at stiff attention,
and he included in his salute to Klein,
the nobility of misdirected heroism.
Courage and nobility have always in-
spired every sacrifice, whether the god
to whom it is offered be Moloch or Je-
hovah, whether reason or unreason de-
mand the martyrdom.
What rites to Moloch there had been
in those antiquated, war-torn nations!
What rule of unreason, when a patriot
believed more in the sanctity of national
whims than in the rights of men, the
triumph of truth, or protection and
fidelity, first, to those he loved.
J
Checking Up
There are times when I wonder whether we appreciate what
Astounding has accomplished for science-fiction in the last two
years. We still receive a smattering of letters which show that
their writers do not even recognize the change in quality. Of
course, the overwhelming majority shows appreciation of our
progress.
Do you recall that three years ago, if a science-fiction magazine
contained a good story it was something to talk about ? And that
when Astounding came to Street & Smith we began to seek out the
BEST writers in the field and buy only their BEST stories?
It was natural that some men whose names we remembered
failed to give us first-class stories. These we reluctantly discarded.
We did not buy names — we bought STORIES. Many of our old
favorites made the grade. And in a sparkling parade we offered
them to you, expecting your loyal support in a field of literature
which has a distinct class appeal.
We have built value steadily — and you who have followed the
magazine realize it. It has not been a flash in the pan — a sudden,
dazzling array of names to be followed by the anticlimax of
mediocrity. It has been sustained effort on my part to give you
the best in science-fiction.
This month, for instance, we give you Jack Williamson, John
Russell Fearn, Don A. Stuart, Raymond Z. Gallun, Frank B. Long
and Eando Binder. It seems like a galaxy of stars.
But next month we bring to you H. P. Lovecraft in a complete
novel of unusual power, Nat Schachner with a thought-variant,
Stanton A. Coblentz, Warner Van Lome and Jack Williamson.
There is no letting down on our part.
Forthcoming issues have already scheduled Murray Leinster,
John W. Campbell, Jr. and Donald Wandrei. And we are in con-
stant touch with Dr. E. E. Smith and others you ask about.
I am getting many letters from new readers who have recently
been introduced to our circle. I wish it were possible to greet each
one individually. But you know I’d like to, and that is the next
best thing — isn’t it?
Working together, with you introducing new readers, and me
giving you a magazine of which we can all be proud, there is nothing
to stop our progress.
But don’t forget that this calls for sustained effort on your part
as well as mine!
The Editor.
And on this screen phantasmal shapes took form
The Weapon * ~
I T WOULD take a vivid imagina-
tion to construct a mental picture of
what the place had once been like.
The low, circular wall of stone, glassy,
as if fused by terrific heat, gave only
the faintest hint of a departed enigma.
The rusted remnants of girders, project-
ing upward from it, meant nothing in
particular. The sterile area the barrier
inclosed, featureless except for the crude
grass hut of fairly recent construction
at its center, suggested to tired minds
and frazzled nerves, little more than an
overpowering depression.
Beyond the walls, which must have
been several hundred yards in circum-
80
ASTOUNDING STORIES
ference, was the jungle, dense and shad-
owy, and horrible as some disease. It
was blotched with vivid, trailing blooms.
The sun was hot, and the air was
motionless. The two white men who
had climbed the wall and had dropped
their packs on its broad crest showed
no enthusiasm as they surveyed what
lay within. Both were youths on their
first real adventure after leaving college.
They had come a long way, on foot,
through thick wilderness. And their
march from Fargo’s little trading sta-
tion had not been without unexpected
trouble.
Their guide, who had followed them
to the top of the barrier, was worthy of
note, so hideously scarred was he. One
cheek had been cut away, exposing
toothless gums. Scraggy white locks
grew on only half of his pate, for the
other half seemed to have been scalped
at some time. Now he looked out over
the expanse within the walls, with a
gleam of cryptic malevolence smolder-
ing in his small, squinted eyes. He gave
a little, inarticulate grunt ; but otherwise
he remained as silent as a battered Inca
idol.
Finally one of the whites spoke:
“The Forgotten City, Corliss. Are
you satisfied that it is worth coming here
to see?”
Kent Marwell was a slight, studious-
appearing fellow. His words were soft
and yet biting, controlled, and yet wild
with an inner tension that was but
sketchily concealed. In his bloodshot
eyes, and about the bitter curve of his
lips, there was evidence of hardships to
which the overcivilized are unsuited.
“This place is clearly not an outpost
of Inca culture,” he added contemptu-
ously. “It looks like what’s left of some
engineer’s abortive brainstorm!”
And John Corliss, his companion, was
in no better mood. His massive shoul-
ders hunched aggressively, as if he were
preparing to plow through a line of op-
posing gridders.
“Shut up, Peewee !” he grated
harshly. “Coming here was as much
your idea as mine ! Didn’t you pay that
crook, Fargo, two hundred good Amer-
ican dollars of my money just so he'd
lend us this native halfwit, that he hap-
pened to find loose in the woods a cou-
ple of months ago, to show us these
remarkable ruins? Do you think I’m
all hot and bothered with joy about be-
ing here? Anyway, if you hadn’t acci-
■dentally shot at that Pygmy, those six
greasers wouldn’t have got scared that
the little devils were going to murder
them, and they wouldn't have pinched
our guns and deserted! You’re a ”
Hs-s-s-s !
THE TWO YOUTHS turned ab-
ruptly. Both knew that the signal was
only the guide, Pedro, the speechless,
blowing air sibilantly between his with-
ered gums. But Pedro had remained
faithful ‘to them. Besides, he had an In-
dian’s keen vision and woodcraft that
detected dangers while there was still
time to be careful.
What was it now? They looked at
the little, wizened old man, crouching
like a brown toad on the wall. He could
not speak, for the ability to do so had
been taken from him by some ghastly
adventure of long ago. Besides, he had
not been in contact with civilization long
enough to have learned any language
with which Corliss and Marwell were
acquainted, even granting that he pos-
sessed sufficient intelligence to gain a
rudimentary mastery of such a lan-
guage. But their eyes could follow the
line of his pointing arm.
Out there where the forest began, a
patch of leaves stirred ever so slightly.
Something whispered through the air.
Instinctively the white men aped Ped-
ro’s swift, sideward bound. A small
floss-fluffed dart pricked the earth in the
walled inclosure. Curare! A scratch
from a barb doped with the deadly stuff
was plenty to kill.
AST-5
THE WEAPON
81
Pedro motioned his two charges to
drop inside the barrier. They did so,
hauling their packs after them. At least
they were fairly safe from the darts of
the Pygmies, here.
Marwell’s thin face had whitened a
trifle. But the touch of fear strength-
ened his courage and dampened his caus-
tic mood. “The imps have soured on
us all right,” he remarked with a rue-
ful grimace. “We’re in for it, Mugs.
They want us, and we haven’t even a
revolver to hold them off. I guess the
only thing we can do is wait, and pray
for a break. They are probably a little
scared to attack us en masse during
daylight. Meanwhile we might go
through with our snoop tour, even if
Fargo did play us for a couple of suck-
ers.” '
Corliss nodded, still with a trace of
surliness. “Right, Peewee,” he said.
The two indicated as best they could
by signs that Pedro was to keep watch.
Then they descended within the walls.
From around them, deep in the forest
beyond the barrier, came the penetrat-
ing whisper of signal drums, muttering
what seemed to them a promise of death.
The reddish ground beneath them was
marked with many small human foot-
prints. They followed these tracks to
the grass hut at the center of the circu-
lar area. There was nothing remark-
able about the crude structure. It was
clearly a product of the Pygmies. But
as they paused before its low, darkened
entrance, they knew that a sense of eeri-
ness had been growing upon them, in
spite of their very recent attitude of
brain — and nerve-weary disappointment.
WHAT mysteries might lie beyond
the low doorway was not the sole cause
of the feeling. There was something
about this whole place, about the glassy
walls that surrounded it, and about its
sad, vegetationless interior, that was —
inexplicable. The Incas, whose home-
land lay far to the west, beyond the
AST— 6
mighty Andes, could never have fabri-
cated things such as these ruins repre-
sented.
Nor did Marwell’s guess that here
was the partial crystallization of some
white man’s magnificent, though crazy,
idea, seem logical now. It would have
been almost impossible to bring all the
necessary materials through the track-
less Amazonian jungle. And, in addi-
tion, though weathering in this climate
was naturally very swift, the signs were
that the relics here were twenty years
old at least. This region had been even
more difficult to reach then than now.
Kent Marwell was ready to admit
that he was stumped. He pointed back
to where a rusty girder projected up-
ward at an in-turned angle, at the sum-
mit of the wall. At regular intervals
around the barrier, were other, similarly
positioned girders, the upper ends of
which seemed to have been fused off by
some terrifically heated blast. Perhaps
once they had formed a huge, conical
framework, or support.
“Those things were never made by
any people that we ever heard about,
Mugs,” he said. “For one thing, big as
they are, they were cast in one piece —
no bolts. Besides, the internal bracing
is different from anything I’ve ever seen
up to now. I didn’t notice before, but
—but ”
“I know,” Corliss commented.
“Maybe we owed old Fargo those two
hundred bucks at that.”
He hunched his broad shoulders down
so that he could enter the low doorway
of the hut, brushing aside the smelly
jaguar pelt that hung in his way. Mar-
well followed him.
“Pygmy fetish house,” the latter said.
Dim light found its way through im-
perfections in the walls, illumining curi-
ous little wooden gods with vacuous
faces. Suspended snake skins, perhaps
containing the medicines of witchcraft,
rustled in the wind made by the intrud-
ers’ entrance.
82
ASTOUNDING STORIES
They wasted no time examining this
curious paraphernalia, however. Their
attention was drawn irresistibly to a set
of objects that seemed out of place in
this primitive array. A large, black
cube, perfectly formed, stood at the cen-
ter of the floor, and seemed attached
to some firmly fixed foundation beneath.
They touched it briefly. Its surfaces
were smooth and hard, like stone.
There was no visible means of discov-
ering what it contained, if it were other
than solid, which it might have been in
so far as they were able to tell.
BUT again their attention wandered.
Lying atop the cube were several splin-
ters of metal, bright and uncorroded.
Beside them rested a curious, unname-
able apparatus, made of the same rust-
less material.
Without comment or exclamation,
Marwell picked it up, and turned it over
wonderingly in his hands. It was well-
shaped, perhaps eighteen inches in
length, and was as bright and new in
appearance as if it had just been deliv-
ered by the unknown craftsmen who had
made it. Its weight was small in com-
parison to its bulk. The device was
provided with a handle at one edge of
its larger end, as a pistol would be. But
the grip was curved and fluted in such
a way as to be uncomfortable and
clumsy for a human hand to grasp. At
the narrow end was a set of lenses, and
the larger end was supplied with a de-
tachable cover. Behind the grip was a
small lever, and along the opposite side
of the device, paralleling its central axis,
was a hollow tube, fitted with lenses like
a small telescope.
“It’s a camera of some kind, Pee-
wee !" Corliss burst out.
“Maybe,” Kent Marwell commented.
He fussed with the lever, pressing it
slightly. From the lensed eye at the
front of the apparatus came a momen-
tary flicker of light. Warned, Marwell
took his fingers away from the lever.
Then, fully conscious of the possible
danger of his act, but impelled to it by
eagerness to probe a mystery, he held
the apparatus up, and attempted to peer
inside it through the system of lenses.
He saw a dim glow; but there was
something infinitely more surprising
about it than its mere presence. It was
uneven. In it, light and shadow and
color were articulated to form a picture,
it was as real as any photograph could
be. At its center the sun was shining,
for the view seemed to angle up toward
the sky. But the jungle could be seen,
too, and a narrow stretch of ground.
A low wall was visible — the same wall
which Marwell and his companions had
scaled a short while before; but this
was a scene of another, earlier time,
perhaps twenty or fifty years in the past.
The girders gleamed with the sheen
of new-cast metal. And instead of be-
ing fused off short, they were complete,
forming the props of a slender, wolfish
fabrication, whose black, torpedolike
snout was supported significantly to-
ward zenith. It could be seen that the
finned base of the thing rested at the
center of the walled inclosure.
Nor was the view motionless, like a
photograph. It had the movement of
an actual sequence of events. Shadows
shifted, foliage trembled as if blown by
wind ; naked Indians toiled slavishly,
moving loaded cages. Somehow those
Indians walked backward. This was
the only easily noticed evidence that the
sequence of things that happened was
oddly in reverse.
THE CAGES contained specimens
of the various creatures that inhabited
the jungle : monkeys, lizards, a jaguar,
a great, listless boa, parrots, even a
tapir.
Crouching before a slab of stone in
front of the cages was the master, or
one of the masters. In spite of his gro-
tesque form, no observer could have
doubted that in him, or in his kind, re-
THE WEAPON
83
sided the purpose and the initiative that
had erected this strange camp.
Folded, bluish wings, like those of a
pterodactyl, caped his narrow shoulders.
His head, supported on a slender neck,
was broad and rounded, and was
equipped with a slender beak. From
beneath his wings, clawed members pro-
jected. They moved with swift, dart-
ing gestures. In them were clutched
bright, keen instruments that flashed in
the sun. The being that was chained
to the block before the master was a
man. His brown face was twisted with
agony. Red blood dyed the block.
Vivisection, born not of cruelty, but of
the burning lust to know the unknown.
During the twenty seconds or so
which was the full duration of his fan-
tastic experience, Kent Marwell almost
forgot that he was here in the fetish
house of the Pygmies.
But “Mugs” Corliss brought him back
to reality.
“Let me look, Peewee!” he demanded.
He had read awe, consternation, and
horror in his companion’s features ; and
he wanted to glimpse the mystery, too.
More than a little dazed, Marwell
handed the bell-shaped apparatus to his
friend automatically, as if he were a
sleepwalker receiving a sudden com-
mand.
Corliss peered through the lenses.
And for several seconds he beheld the
same bizarre marvels that Marwell had
seen. Then, quite abruptly, the view
reddened and faded out.
“It’s gone, Peewee,” he said.
Marwell had recovered himself
enough by now to be normally, if
greatly, excited. “Give that — that dev-
il’s spyglass back to me!” he cried. “I
want to see for myself what you’ve done
to break it!”
But Corliss, similarly excited, did not
comply. Instead, as his smaller com-
panion reached eagerly toward him to
wrench the apparatus from his hands,
he retreated, backing through the door-
way of tl*:',fhut and out into the open.
“Wait a minute, Peewee!” he pro-
tested plaintively. “I didn’t do any-
thing to the contraption !”
Kent Marwell rushed after him in
pursuit. And Pedro, the speechless,
perhaps attracted by what seemed to be
an impending scuffle, deserted his posi-
tion beside the wall and came loping to-
ward the two white men.
MARWELL had seized the device in
Corliss’ grasp now, and for a moment
the pair tussled for possession of it.
There was no real rancor in their dif-
ference ; they were like a couple of small
boys in an argument over a treasured
curiosity.
But Marwell’s fingers came in con-
tact with the lever behind the grip of
the thing. Before he knew what had
happened, the lever was fully com-
pressed.
There was a flash from the lensed
muzzle of the apparatus. Invisibly in
the intense sunshine, a slender pencil of
rays shot from the device, and made a
dazzling spot where it touched the
ground.
Had Corliss and Marwell remained
motionless after that, no harm would
have been done ; but their scuffle could
not end instantly. There were the
natural body reflexes of straightening
up to regain equilibrium. And it took
a second for Marwell’s mind, a bit
blurred by novelty, to realize the need
of removing his hand from the lever.
And so the slim beam swung through
a swift arc before it was extinguished.
And it touched Pedro’s shoulder.
The grotesque Indian voiced a choking
gurgle of agony from his paralyzed
throat. Then he bounded aside.
The whites looked at their guide.
Pedro held a gnarled hand clamped
over the seared spot on his shoulder.
His small eyes were the only portion
of his mutilated visage that could regis-
ter emotion, and in them there was more
84
ASTOUNDING STORIES
than a look of pain. Black, vindictive
hatred was there, too; yet it did not
seem to be directed at the men who were
responsible for his recent injury, for his
gaze was not turned toward them, but
toward the door of the fetish house,
where, beyond the now rumpled jaguar-
skin hanging, the black cube was dimly
visible. And his eyes seemed to bore
even beyond that, into a time , that was
dead.
However, the two youths did not no-
tice this ; for their attentions were held
by more important details of the episode.
“Jiminy crickets!” Corliss croaked.
His exclamation sounded curiously gro-
tesque and inadequate.
Marwell turned toward the guide.
“Sorry, old fellow,” he muttered in
English. “We’ll fix up that sore shoul-
der for you.”
John Corliss, who had retained the
alien instrument of destruction after the
scuffle, laid it carefully on the barren
ground. Together he and Marwell ex-
amined Pedro’s injury. It was slight,
but it revealed pointedly the capacities
of the strange weapon. The wound was
a narrow mark, charred as if made by a
rod of steel, heated in a forge.
THEY procured materials from their
first-aid supplies and dressed the wound.
Pedro’s eyes softened, like a fawning
dog’s, and curious duckings gyrgled in
his throat. He was not angry with his
masters. But when they were finished
with their task, he tried to lunge for
the weapon.
“What’s the matter with you, you
fool?” Corliss growled.
“Leave him be,” Marwell advised.
“He won’t bother us if we keep an eye
on him. Let’s see if we can figure out
how this machine works.”
He picked up the weapon from where
his companion had laid it. Now he un-
fastened the clasps which held the cover,
at its larger end, in place. The entire
back of the apparatus came away, re-
vealing a hollow interior, quite like that
of any ordinary camera. The thing
which was most provocative of interest
remained fastened to the cover.
It was a large disk, slightly concave,
and two inches in thickness. The men
touched its surface, which was as smooth
and cool as polished glass. But it was
dead-black. There was not the faint-
est suggestion of reflected highlights.
“What do you make of it, Ken ?”
Corliss demanded.
Kent Marwell’s brows crinkled with
thought. In his mind, the skeleton of
an idea was forming.
“Wait, Mugs,” he said. “I want to
see what several minutes of exposure to
the sun will do to this disk.”
From time to time he touched the
smooth surface gingerly.
“Still cold,” he muttered at last. “The
sun’s rays don’t warm this plate at all ;
yet, obviously, it absorbs them. Any-
way, not a trace of visible light is re-
flected by it. Otherwise it wouldn’t be
so intensely and completely black. John,
I think I begin to understand the princi-
ple of this dinkus. The pictures we
saw' gave me the idea. This is the way
it’s charged : by exposure to the sun !
This disk stores solar radiant energy in
some manner, not as heat, of course, but
by changing it into some form of poten-
tial energy with which we are probably
not acquainted. When you put this
plate back into its normal position in the
front part of the apparatus, and press
the lever, you get the radiant energy
back much more sw'iftly than it was ab-
sorbed. That is one reason why the
beam can burn things like it does.
“Then, too, you’ll notice that the disk
is a little bit concave; that would tend
to focus the rays to a point when they
reached the forward lenses. The lenses
straighten them out, so that they be-
come plane or parallel, with no tendency
to spread or converge. Thus they can
be projected in the form of a slender
and highly concentrated beam.”
THE WEAPON
85
“But the pictures, Peewee,” Corliss
protested. “Why did everything in
them happen backward ? Anyway, what
caused us to see them when we peeked
through the front lenses? They must
have come from the disk some way,
since it was right behind the lenses.
Still, we can’t see any pictures at all
now. The disk is blacker than the ace
of spades! How is that?”
Marwell almost chuckled. “Remem-
ber when we first found the thing?” he
asked. “I was fussing with the lever.
I didn’t press it much — just enough to
release the tiniest bit of stored-up rays.
But you can see what happened.”
HE pointed to two thick wires, ar-
ranged in the forward part of the ap-
paratus in such a way that, when the
cover bearing the disk was in place, the
ends of the wires would touch the edges
of the disk at opposite points in its cir-
cumference. The other ends of the wires
were embedded in a small, black cylinder
into which the acting end of the lever,
or trigger, disappeared.
“We’ll call the cylinder the ‘exciter,’ ”
Marwell went on. “When I pressed
the trigger that first time, it went into
action a little bit, exciting the disk so
that it emitted a minute quantity of its
stored energy.
“When I released the trigger, the
process didn’t stop immediately. Due
to some peculiarity doubtless inherent in
the elements involved, there was about
a minute of ‘hang.’ That was when we
saw the pictures. Since the light waves
that brought them to our eyes, were
plane, and sufficiently concentrated, the
view was clearer than it would have
been without the lenses.
“And now for an explanation of the
pictures themselves. When the disk
absorbs the sun’s rays, it, of course, ab-
sorbs an impression of the sun’s image,
as well as impressions of the images
of the various surrounding objects that
are capable of reflecting light. For
storage, the light waves are converted
into some other form of impulse, which,
during the process of absorption, sink
into the disk at a constant rate, and at
an angle corresponding to the angle at
which each light wave struck the disk's
surface. That, anyway, is my concep-
tion of what happens.
“Then, when the plate is acted upon
by the exciter, it gives up its images.
If you can imagine a mirror whose re-
flective action can be delayed indefinitely,
you have a crude analogy of what takes
place. Only, since the last images to
be absorbed, are given up first, and the
first last, the sequence is, of course, in
reverse. But the apparatus is clearly
intended for defensive and offensive
purposes anyway ; and the fact that,
while absorbing sunshine, it also re-
ceives visual impressions, is probably
just a logical, coincident property of no
importance. That’s about all I can say.”
JOHN CORLISS nodded acceptance
of his friend’s explanations. “Let’s try
pressing that trigger down a little again,
Peewee,” he suggested. “Just to take
another look at those pictures. We
might learn something more of where
this weapon was made, and by whom.”
“No time now,” Marwell replied,
nodding toward the forest, beyond whose
dark screen of foliage the signal drums
still muttered. “There’s hell ahead of
us, and we’d better let the only thing
we’ve got for defense charge up as much
as possible. I’ll not be too hopeful even
at that. The imps must know a lot
about our heat gun, because it was in
their fetish house, and it probably won’t
scare them. And I don’t expect too
much from it, anyway — not in thick jun-
gle, while fighting an enemy that does
its best to keep hidden. Frankly, we’ll
do good to last out through the night.”
He propped the disk so that its sur-
face was exposed exactly at right angles
to the glare of the tropic sun.
Corliss shivered involuntarily.
86
ASTOUNDING STORIES
“Maybe we ought to start back now,
Peewee,” he said.
His companion scoffed. “With sun-
set a couple of hours off, and thirty
miles to go to get to Fargo’s camp?” he
questioned. “To my sins we’ve added
desecration of a sanctuary to Pygmy
gods. I think we’d better stay where
we are. At lease we have stone walls
to hide behind here.”
Corliss and Marwell prepared a fru-
gal meal. Pedro ate with them, munch-
ing his food with toothless gums, the
while his gaze wandered back and forth
from the fetish house, with the mysteri-
ous black cube inside it, to the weapon,
lying dissembled on the ground close at
hand. The whites were suspicious that
he would attempt again to seize the ap-
paratus, and so they kept on guard.
It would not do to have it fall into his
hands, even for a moment. In this
event, there was no telling what might
happen.
But though he several times seemed
on the point of making a lunge, he did
not move from his crouching position.
Yet his eyes were squinted with a sub-
dued and watchful malice. Wild jungle
beast that he had so recently been, it
was no wonder that the white men found
him difficult to understand.
The air seemed charged with a ten-
sion that was only waiting for dusk.
The whites conversed in low tones,
discussing unnameable things. Some-
thing from the region of the stars had
touched this place, they knew. It had
come, it had studied Earth and its liv-
ing creatures, it had left its mark, and
it bad gone, probably never to return.
The thoughts in the minds of the two
men were grotesquely unlike any that
had ever been there before.
After a while the sun declined behind
the macabre and ghoulish tracery of the
forest. Shadows came, stretching long,
gray arms across the reddish floor of
the amphitheater. The planet Venus
gleamed in the west.
Soon objects were no longer distinctly
visible. Shapes could move stealthily
now, and only the most watchful gaze
could detect their presence.
Foliage quivered here and there.
Curare-impregnated darts flitted noise-
lessly through the air, seeking to prick
the skins of the three who crouched be-
leaguered within the barriers which the
unknown visitants had erected around
their camp decades ago.
Corliss and Marwell had reassembled
their weapon. Now they paced cease-
lessly around the walls, watching.
Kent Marwell held the strange heat
gun. Several times he held the small,
lensed tube of its sighting device to his
eye, trying to become accustomed to its
intricacies. Finally he pressed the trig-
ger, after aiming at a spot in the forest
barrier where he had twice seen suspi-
cious movement.
A THIN ROD of intense light shot
out. The haze in its path glowed like
tarnished silver. Flitting insects re-
flected the glare like bits of incandescent
magnesium, before their smoking bod-
ies dropped to the ground. The beam
seared into the green foliage. There
was a gurgle of agony and a thrashing
sound. Then silence.
It was quite dark before the Pygmies
ventured another advance. Once more
they were repulsed by the science of a
race about which the present wielders
of the weapon that hurled back the
stored rays of the sun knew almost
nothing.
The attempts to storm the citadel be-
came more frequent. The moon rose,
shedding soft radiance that- worked a
deceptive and beautiful magic over the
bizarre scene. Little bodies slithered,
like slinking and malicious elves, from
shadow to dense shadow, now working
their way closer, and now retreating to
safety — now approaching from this an-
gle, and now that. It was an interest-
ing, if dangerous, game.
THE WEAPON
87
The defenders might have allowed
them to make a rush had it not been
for the menace of the darts from the
blow guns. Because of this, it was
necessary, always, to keep those tiny
warriors at a distance. And to do so
consumed much of the cameralike weap-
on’s store of energy. Probably that
store had been considerable even before
the men had set the black disk in the
sunshine ; yet it promised to be insuffi-
cient to meet demands put upon it.
Time and again either Corliss or Mar-
well discharged from the apparatus a
searing shaft of solar radiations.
Dragging hours went by. Somewhere
in the distance a jaguar grunted. The
low, glassy walls of the citadel brooded
like some sprawling gray monster un-
der the moon. And the besiegers, lashed
to fury by the deaths of several of their
companions, continued with their grim
work.
The air was growing cooler; and a
thick, white, strataform fog was collect-
ing in a damp hollow at the edge of the
forest.
Dawn was not far off when Marwell
and his companion discovered what
they had feared. The power of their
weapon was definitely waning. Its path
through the mist was less bright, and
though there was still danger in it, the
Pygmies had grown bolder, sensing that
the time of victory was almost at hand.
“It won’t be long,” Marwell said.
He bit his lip, trying to suppress the
visions that persisted in crowding into
his brain. Should these little brown
devils capture them alive — a result which
was almost certain — two white men who
had killed some of their brothers could
expect a slow and ghastly revenge at
their hands.
CORLISS and Marwell had almost
forgotten Pedro’s existence. Now, how-
ever, the speechless Indian touched
Marwell’s shoulder to attract his atten-
tion. Pedro whimpered with plaintive
excitement, and pointed toward the layer
of fog in the marshy hollow.
Neither of the whites could see any-
thing significant there. No Pygmies
had invaded the fog ; for to do so, far
from providing them with concealment,
would have silhouetted their forms
against the milky mist.
“What’s the matter, you fool?” Mar-
well demanded irritably.
The weapon in his grasp flashed again.
There were howls of pain from the
fringe of the forest; but none of the at-
tackers dropped. A momentary ex-
posure to the now diminished rays was
no longer sufficient to kill.
Encouraged by this discovery, the lit-
tle men launched a sudden, fierce rush.
Nearly a hundred of them were run-
ning toward the ramparts from all sides.
And suddenly Pedro went berserk.
Without a sound he leaped upon Kent
Marwell. So swift and unexpected was
his attack that the white man had no
opportunity for defense. He toppled
over. The bell-shaped apparatus was
torn from his hands.
Swiftly Pedro was up. His fingers
fumbled clumsily with the screws which
controlled the adjustment of the lenses
at the front of the weapon.
Corliss would have attempted to re-
strain him ; but then a vague awe born
of a belief that the Indian had a rea-
sonable purpose checked the impulse.
Cursing, Marwell had now climbed
to his feet; he too was halted, as if
by a spell.
Now the weapon came up, supported
by Pedro’s gnarled arms. The glinting
lenses, fixed in a new adjustment, were
pointed toward the white strata of fog.
The trigger was compressed.
It was not a slender cylinder of rays
that issued from the muzzle of the thing
now, but a broad cone, like that of a
searchlight. Too scattered to be dan-
gerous, it stabbed into the dense trans-
lucence of the mist, which assumed the
character of a white screen.
88
ASTOUNDING STORIES
And on this screen phantasmal shapes
took form like the visions of a mirage.
They were blurred, as if out of focus ;
but their unearthly majesty was clearly
discernible. The spectacle was like that
of an episode of the Arabian Nights,
crystallized into quasireality.
THERE was a great, red sun, wal-
lowing, now, like a fiery bubble, in the
mist. The pinnacle of a huge tower
was pointed toward it at a crazy angle ;
for this was evidently a skyward view.
On the multiple terraces of the tower,
metal Titans were congregated. Things
with huge beaks and leathery bodies
that seemed to possess characteristics
of both bird and bat crouched among
them.
The few movements that were made
were reversed, as were those of that
other vision. And they were also very
swift, for the device that produced the
pictures projected them much more rap-
idly than they had bt'cn absorbed.
For perhaps a dozen seconds, Mar-
well and Corliss found speech impossi-
ble. Awe seemed to paralyze their
throats and tongues.
“Just — just like a magic lantern, Pee-
wee!” John Corliss stammered at last.
“That tower, that sun ! Another world,
another solar system ! The heat pistol
was charged on that world ; and there
was a residue of the original charge left
in the thing!”
Marwell was calmer. “Yes,” he said
“The pictures were stored in the black
disk. Pedro changed the adjustment
of the lenses. That did the trick. The
whole business is quite easy to under-
stand now. Pedro was one of the In-
dians those monsters captured to use
as slaves while on Earth. They experi-
mented with him. That is why he’s so
scarred. But he was intelligent enough
to learn things from them. This is an
example of the knowledge he gained.”
“The Pygmies !” Corliss cried.
Screaming with fright, the attackers
were scattering in every direction to-
ward the jungle. Terror at the uncanny
phenomenon held them in its grip. To
them this was doubtless a visitation of
their gods. Probably they had known
of the alien weapon’s power to kill, and
had not been afraid to die thus. But
the mirage — this was a different thing;
and that they had previously stumbled
upon the means of producing it seemed
unlikely.
The miracle was waning now, grow-
ing redder and dimmer. Almost the
last dregs of energy in the weapon had
been used up.
Pedro released his grip on the trig-
ger. Once more his fingers twirled the
adjustment screws of the lenses. Then,
his face a fiendish mask of hatred, he
directed the weapon toward the grass
hut at the center of the inclosed area.
A thread of light, fine almost as a hair,
flashed toward the flimsy structure. The
dry tinder of it took fire; for though
there was almost no energy left in the
weapon, still there was enough to pro-
duce for a moment, an intensely con-
centrated thread of rays.
Pedro clutched his two charges and
pushed them to the wall, indicating that
they were to climb over it. They
obeyed, for reason told them that now
they were in little danger of being at-
tacked.
Urged on, they ran toward the jungle.
And their strange guide, bearing an in-
vention of another people, loped awk-
wardly but swiftly in their wake. None
of their former enemies hindered them.
THEY had progressed several hun-
dred yards along a jungle trail, when,
from behind them, came an explosion of
a magnitude such as they had never be-
fore experienced. The concussion of it
was so terrific that they seemed not
so much to hear it with their ears as to
feel it with the flesh and bone and
nerves of their bodies. The blaze of it
was utterly blinding. It lighted up the
THE WEAPON
89
whole jungle and the whole sky more
brilliantly than a hundred suns.
All three men were hurled prone by
the blast of air that rushed over them.
Corliss, huge and powerful, was the first
to pick himself up. Blinking his smart-
ing eyes, he looked behind. From the
rear now came a steady, incandescent
glare, stabbing through the fantastic
tracery of black vines and trees. In the
flesh of the three men was a tingling
sensation which may have betrayed the
presence of some unknown and perhaps
dangerous radiation proceeding from
whatever violent process was in progress
behind.
In the light, Corliss looked like a
bewildered bull. “What the devil,
Kent!” was all he could say.
Curiously, Marwell seemed calmer
than ever before. "The black cube, I
think,” he said. “The burning hut ig-
nited whatever it contained. A kind
of explosive, maybe, to propel a — a sort
of contrivance for traveling between the
stars. The — the visitors must have for-
gotten to take it with them when they
left. And Pedro knew about it. He
knows a lot of things.”
“We ought to go back for a look at
the wreckage, Peewee,” Corliss said.
“Not now,” Marwell replied. “We
couldn’t see or learn a thing. And the
glare might blind us permanently. We
can come back from Fargo’s camp in a
couple of days, after this place cools off ;
but we can’t expect to find much more
than a blasted hole in the ground. The
adventure’s over.”
Corliss and Marwell looked at the
monstrous little man who was their
guide. His eyes were bright, and there
was an air of animated satisfaction about
him. Perhaps when he had ignited the
hut he had thought less of thoroughly
scaring the Pygmies than of evening
odds with the unknowns. Childish,
primitive psychology. Vengeance upon
an unreachable enemy by destroying
some possession of that enemy.
But the ghastly scars that covered
his withered, brown body would remain
with him until he died.
The three stumbled on toward the
camp of Fargo, thirty miles to the west.
Something prompted Marwell to at-
tempt to wrest the weapon from Pedro’s
grasp. His move was unresisted ; he
held the thing in his hands.
Suddenly he laughed. “You know,
Mugs,” he said in a bantering tone, “I
wonder if the cops back in Topeka will
soon be wearing weapons like this one.”
Corliss grinned. “Hope so,” he re-
plied. “Because if they do, maybe I’ll
get my two hundred bucks back.”
Mathematica Plus
The sequel to Mathematica
by John Russell Fearn
P ELATHON, denizen of a world
and universe unknown, sat in
brooding calm at the rear of a
dry and dusty cave, every detail of his
pinched face and intellectually bulging
forehead clearly illumined by a curiously
dazzling bright substance that gave forth
no heat.
Upon either side of him, reluctant to
disturb his profound mental researches,
sat the powerful figures of Dr. Farring-
ton and— at the risk of sounding ego-
tistical — myself. Both of us were more
godlike than any man known on the
Earth, attired only in such rough gar-
ments as modesty demanded — and both
of us deathless, given eternal life in a
world of unknown and stupefying com-
plexes.
Already I have written at length of
our sojourn to the beginning, and of
our discovery of the supreme mathe-
matician of the universe. Together, we
three had lived and died through a mad
chaos of living figures and intelligent
mathematics, to conclude our first ex-
perience as indivisible, eternal beings,
in a world we had hoped would be our
own Earth. But no ! We lived now in
our deathlessness not on the Earth, but
on a world in a universe unknown.
Through the cave entrance, in the val-
ley below, we could distinctly see a dty,
hovering as though without foundations
—a city of phantasmal changes that
drifted perpetually through crazy, inde-
terminate sequences. A city wherein
nothing was solid, where the people were
lines and bars that rotated and shifted
in mid-air, or else moved with stu-
pendous velocity to unknown destina-
tions. This, then, we were faced with,
unable to understand the first vaguest
implications of it all
“WELL” commented Farrington at
length, breaking the long silence, “we’ve
been stuck here about a week, and we
don’t seem to be any nearer. That in-
fernal city gets more mystifying the
more one looks at it. We’ve just got to
think up something, you know,” he con-
cluded seriously. “We can’t sit here for
all eternity.”
I nodded slowly and then turned to
the silent Pelathon. “What do you
think?” I asked him quietly. “You’ve
been down there— stolen some of this
perpetual cold-light substance, and writ-
ing materials. You found its peoples
cruel and heartless, apparently — but that
surely doesn’t entirely excommunicate
us from them?”
Pelathon aroused himself, with some
effort, from his profound meditation.
His little eyes, almost concealed in that
pinched face, regarded us each in turn.
“Even if I have been silent, I have not
been idle,” he answered pensively.
“Those people down there are, of course,
quite unlike anything in existence in your
kin or mine. They are far more ad-
vanced than either of our races. We
find here a world resembling your Earth
only in the matter of air and size: not
that either of these things matters since
we are quite deathless — but at least we
know that the figures of Si-Lafnor, who
created this universe early in the chain
of universal mathematics, were correct
in that one respect.
“As regards the people, I am baffled.
Then, presently, even that passed, leaving nothing but a swirling
cosmic dust, which slowly changed
92
ASTOUNDING STORIES
I cannot understand what Si-Lafnor did
to create a species so utterly unlike
Earthling's. Allowing for the widest
margin of error, which I have done dur-
ing my own calculations in these last
few days, I cannot by any stretch of
deductive reasoning reconcile these
people. They exist, as I see it, in a
state that lies just between matter and
thought, just as in a normal Earthling
there is a condition between man and
boy — adolescence.”
“And that means what?” asked Far-
rington quietly.
“It means that these people are
masters of matter and thought at will,
are products of very high mathematics.
That accounts for the shifting and
changing outlines, responding to their
every thought change. It accounts too
for their transparent city. The haze
that hangs over it — the constant sug-
gestion of unreality — is, I am now con-
vinced, purely occasioned by the barrier
line which eternally hovers between mat-
ter and mind.
“This cold-light substance is alone
proof of the brilliance of these people.
It is composed of a chemical foreign to
our knowledge, which possesses an
atomic constitution that vibrates at a
steady speed. This vibration, trans-
ferred to ether, continues ceaselessly
and gives rise to the sensation of light
without the longer wave lengths of heat.
This, you will realize, is positive proof
that these creatures are semimaterial in
that they have visual organs akin to
ours. Otherwise they might construe
the sensation we call light as something
else ”
“True enough,” Farrington nodded,
and reflected for a space. Then, “Well,
what do you propose we do?”
“There is no move we can make ex-
cept investigating the city,” Pelathon
replied, rising to his feet. “At first I
was inclined to the belief that the people
are cold and cruel — now I think that that
view might have been occasioned by
their complete and absolute detachment
from all things mundane. Whatever it
may be we have got to explore. Let
us go.”
HE PAUSED and waited as a rotat-
ing bar, a delicate, silvered creation of
indescribable delicacy, merged suddenly
out of the air and floated toward us.
We realized it was one of the grotesque
inhabitants of this impossible place.
Yet, even so, there seemed no reason to
fear danger. We were indestructible!
As we watched the object it con-
tracted to a pin point, then changed into
a square, and lastly back into a rotating
bar. Gradually, upon our expectant
senses, there crept a beating and, at first,
unintelligible rhythm. It was a truly
extraordinary sensation — a steady and
unremitting beat of heart and pulses,
a throbbing of blood vessels in our
brains.
Before our eyes, as the pulsating con-
tinued, the vision of the city melted and
faded away. Even the .light waned and
was replaced by an intense and over-
powering darkness. I felt an instinct to
cry out, but I could not. Something was
holding my mind and body in chains.
I remember that I wondered briefly what
had happened to Pelathon and Farring-
ton, then, oddly enough, I ceased com-
pletely to care. They lost all interest
for me.
Instead my mind was undergoing a
peculiar but trenchant metamorphosis.
It was as though I was inside something
of Stygian gloom, sensing my presence
from the viewpoint of somebody else,
and yet accomplishing that detection
purely by the constant and all-pervading
rhythm! At times it changed into a
pattern of cross beats, but jn the main
retained its ordered persistency.
Then, at last, I began to recognize in
that beating — or thought I did — a for-
mation into either thought vibrations or
words. Whichever it was, information
MATHEMATICA PLUS
93
was most certainly passing into my
vaguely terrified brain.
“It is indeed a rare circumstance for
one of us to come across three material
creatures who cannot be broken down
and absorbed by our minds! To you,
material beings, the process would per-
haps be called digestion. With us, such
a procedure is relegated to the long-dead
past when pure materiality inhabited the
universe. I have endeavored to men-
tally digest the three of you and so
absorb your respective knowledges and
add them to my own — but without suc-
cess. You are different, and, as such,
are worthy subjects for experiment. It
is the first time that uncanceling units
have entered our realm. Prepare then
for ”
The rhythm changed from its slow
and funereal beat into one of extreme
speed. There was no sense of motion —
indeed no sense of anything at all save
that impenetrable eldritch darkness.
Being inside the intellect of the creature
was something beyond my conception
in any case. I waited patiently, and at
last there grew out of all that blackness
a sense of light, rapidly taking on form
until I realized that my body had re-
turned to me and that I Was standing,
Pelathon and Farrington on either side
of me, beneath a titanic, almost trans-
parent ball, supported upon massive,
eight-foot thick trestles of some un-
known metal.
The rhythm ceased.
“What now?” murmured Farrington,
standing tense and expectant, then
looking above him at the colossal, poised
ball. “Where are we, anyhow? Looks
like a hall of sorts. Machinery over
there — nobody in sight, though ”
He relapsed into silence. The
rhythm had returned.
“You are mistaken, my friend,” it
commented, every tiny detail of the ob-
servation and every facet of its impli-
cation registering upon our brains.
“The intellectuals are about you, as-
cended now into a higher plane of
mathematics and thought where they are
invisible to you. Know you that the
chosen three thousand watch your every
move, study your every reaction, know
your every thought.
“For countless aeons the etheric ab-
sorber, which you behold above you, has
drained the knowledge from the minds
populating other planets in this universe,
has supplied to us a great and constant
stream of accumulating knowledge.
How much easier then does the absorber
analyze you Long since we digested
all material creatures, transformed them
into energy and absorbed their knowl-
edge. But with you it is different. We
are puzzled, and yet interested.”
“Why ?” Farrington demanded almost
aggressively, looking about him in
annoyance and meeting naught but
emptiness.
“Clearly you are not of our universe,”
the rhythm resumed. “It is an unde-
niable fact that within a universe every
scrap of matter can exchange with
energy, and energy with matter, yet
with you it is different. You cannot
be changed. You belong to another uni-
verse, are utterly apart from this one,
unaffected by whatever happens to it.
That, in itself, is, to us, a gigantic
enigma. Whence come you? We seek
to know.”
“I thought your precious etheric
absorber read our minds for you ?”
“Truly, but only the thoughts con-
tained within your brains. How are we
to know those thoughts are correct ? We
see in them only vague and cloudy sug-
gestions, devoid of concrete fact.”
FARRINGTON smiled faintly. “We
have nothing to gain in withholding in-
formation from you, but before we
really explain we’d like a few explana-
tions from you.”
“What do you wish to know?”
“What is this planet? Who are you?
Tell us all about yourselves.”
94
ASTOUNDING STORIES
“Upon this planet, known as Xulon,
there once existed a material race, not
altogether unlike you. We, pursuers of
pure intelligence, forsook our own
planet when it became unsupportable for
our type of life, and came here, rapidly
digested the knowledge of the materials
and transformed their bodies into
energy, after absorbing the most valued
parts of their minds, such as they were.
“For a long time we have been
masters of ether control. We have
means of tapping the vast radiations and
powers that eternally pass through the
substance of eternity. We have, by this
method, drained every known planet’s
population, near or distant, of all the
knowledge possessed by it. That is to
6ay, that the ball above you is basically
magnetic and absorbs all the radiations
of ether cosmic rays, light, and so forth.
Within these various radiations there
are contained the outflung thoughts of
the inhabitants of other worlds, which
we sift from the assortment of super-
fluous radiations we also obtain.
“To make it clearer to you, a thought,
once expressed, travels eternally through
ether, becomes indeed part of it, com-
bines with radiations and every other
known etheric peculiarity. Hence, tap-
ping thoughts from other worlds, far
or near, is a child’s problem with the
correct apparatus.
“That is what we have done with our
ether absorber, converters, and other
machinery. Little by little we are
evolving, by the knowledge we’ve at-
tained, into pure intellectuals. As yet
we still cannot entirely throw off a mat-
ter formation— hence our thoughts ex-
press themselves materially. Our city,
everything you have seen, is pure
thought. We understand, too, dimen-
sions, space and time. Of space there
is infinity, but of time nothing.”
“Nothing?” Farrington questioned.
“There is no such thing as time — at
least, that is what we believe. Why, you
may eventually learn. You appreciate
now how we can become invisible or
visible at will by altering our thoughts ;
you will appreciate too how we can
digest energy as you materials digest
food — and, too, you will understand that
we speak by etheric rhythm.
“Our thoughts form vibration on this
medium which, by the natural formation
of your very materialistic brains, re-
solves into a normal understanding,
much the same as the collapse of elec-
trons in a star creates etheric disturb-
ances which your eyes construe as light.
“We, the chosen three thousand, are
future lords of the universe. We seek
to understand what ether is, indeed if
it even exists, and the purpose behind
everything. Why things came into
being at all, and how they will end
Can it be that you have been sent to us,
obviously beings from a universe out-
side of this one, to aid us in our search ?”
“We are seekers after information,
just as you are,” said Pelathon slowly.
“The information you have given us is
interesting, but it proves you to be a
race which is entirely self-centered and
relentless. Where was your right in
destroying the proper inhabitants of this
world ?”
“One does not question Tight, when
in possession of superior knowledge,”
came the response. “The greater will
forever crush the lesser ; that is in-
evitable. I read from the minds of the
two Earthlings that upon their planet
they indulge in the slaughter of animals
that their carnal cravings might be
appeared. Where then is the difference
between their methods and ours?”
“In any case we needn’t enter into
that,” said I, rather taken aback by the
inhuman logic of the invisible’s obser-
vations. “You are correct in your belief
that we don’t belong here. Our coming
was a gigantic accident. Originally we
belonged to the Earth, my friend and I.
“We found a thought-duplicating
metal which, by thought, brought this
man Pelathon to us from his own far
MATHEMATICA PLUS
95
distant planet and universe. He sought
the beginning of creation, and with him
we went down to the creator of the
Earthly universe, a being named Si-
Lafnor.
“He, in his turn, sought the cause of
his universe, so we went down again
to the supreme mathematician, creator
of creators, and there found that all
universes are purely a figurative formula
traced on an endless background of
etheric abstract— a sort of mass of mul-
tiplying figures.
“In that journey we lost our own uni-
verse, but Si-Lafnor promised to re-
create it. He did so, but with defective
figures, which brought us to here — a
universe of which we are no part.
Doubly difficult is our position because,
to escape the annihilating force of the
supreme mathematician, we were made
uncancelable by Si-Lafnor. That is,
built up of figures which will not cancel,
and therefore we are immortal. That is
our story. Our universe has gone —
forever.”
There was silence.
THEN, suddenly, the outlines of our
surroundings changed completely ; with
the quickness of a snapping camera
shutter the ether absorber vanished, and
the hall of machinery. Instead we
found ourselves in a black-draped room
— though we had certainly not physi-
cally moved a fraction of an inch —
facing an Earthly-looking man of inde-
terminate age. His face was strong and
purposeful, his forehead well-developed
and his eyes and hair jet-black. Quietly
he motioned to chairs that were mys-
teriously behind us, and we sank into
them.
“I have been chosen by the three
thousand as the interpreter of their
wishes,” he explained steadily. “You
may call me 2816 , since that is the unit
of intellect I occupy in my race. My
existence is that of an interpreter and,
as such, I am addressing you, devoid of
all personal bias and prejudice, voicing
purely the wishes and thoughts of the
chosen. It is better that I assume the
form of an Earthling in order that we
may more freely understand one an-
other; ether rhythm, whilst being the
only universal method of communica-
tion, has also certain disadvantages when
there are express wishes to be made
clear.”
“What are the wishes?” Farrington
asked guardedly.
“The chosen have understood from
your story that there is a mathematical
source to this universe — indeed to all
universes. They have suspected such a
fact for a considerable period and, for
the great truth you have brought, they
tender their eternal recognition. But,
they ask if you are prepared to advance
science further and accomplish, by that
very process, a dual move — likely to
benefit the chosen and ultimately your-
selves.”
“Meaning what?”
“To these figures there must be an
ultimate solution. What is the end of
it all? That is what the chosen seek
to know. Listen carefully! None of
the chosen, even though he possesses
the knowledge of how to accomplish the
feat, dare travel to the end, because if
he did so he would dissolve at that end
and never return to tell his story. With
you it is different. Time, which does
not really exist, space, matter and energy
can warp and vanish into unthinkable
extinction without you being affected,
because you are not a part of it.
“Therefore, you could go to the end
and bring us back the story of what you
have seen. Then, and only then, will
the intellectual puzzle of the chosen be
complete. They know from you the
beginning — but the problem is not
solved until they know also the end.
You understand ?”
“True we are immortal, can stand the
cold of space, airless conditions — every-
thing. But how does it benefit us?”
96
ASTOUNDING STORIES
"That will come afterward, as your
reward for your services to us. Every-
thing relies on the answer you will bring
back. If the answer is what we expect,
then we can probably return you to your
own universe and world.”
We said nothing.
"Reflect upon the possibilities,” 2816
resumed. “You had the courage to seek
the beginning, knowing full well— or at
least thinking so — that it would mean
the forsaking of your own universe.
Why then can you not seek the end
when you have our assurance of safe
return to your respective worlds?”
“Certainly we can do nothing here as
we are,” Farrington admitted presently.
“What do you two say?”
“I don’t quite see how we can possibly
be returned to our own universe, no
matter what answer we might bring
back,” I remarked. "Our universe is
dead.”
If 2816 had been capable of smiling
he probably would have done so then.
“You heard the rhythm of the chosen ;
you heard the remark that time is a non-
existent thing. We shall prove to you
the truth of that — that it is not a dimen-
sion, not a spatial state, not any thing.
Long ago we ceased to use it in our
cosmic calculations. You cannot be ex-
pected to understand the underlying
truth of the observation until you have
tested its efficiency for yourselves. Your
universe never died, you never moved
from it- -but why and how is left to the
chosen to explain. I merely interpret.
Now, your decision? Yes or no?”
“And the alternative?” Pelathon
questioned gravely, pursuing as ever
deeper issues.
2816 shrugged. “What alternative
can there be? We can do nothing to
you — you are free to do exactly as you
choose. We can inflict no punishment
for refusal to obey our wishes. You
Will inflict that on yourselves. If you
refuse this request of the chosen it will
never be extended again and you will
spend your immortal lives trying vainly
to find the way back. The chosen be-
lieve that you will not prove so foolish.”
"The chosen are right!” Farrington
declared flatly. “We accept. At least
we can’t be any the worse off. What do
you two say?”
Pelathon and I said nothing ; we
merely nodded gravely. Common sense
forbade any other course of action.
II.
SO we cast in our lot with the intel-
lectuals of Xulon, and during the days
that ensued were treated to a demon-
stration of their terrific scientific knowl-
edge and prowess. Pelathon, genius
though he undoubtedly was, found it
more than he could manage to under-
stand the construction of the infinity
globe, as the chosen called the gigantic
sphere in which we were to make the
journey to the end and back.
In essence it operated much the same
as Pelathon’s own machinery, when we
had originally left the Earth in search
of the beginning, but in this instance the
driving mechanisms added figures in-
stead of subtracting them, utilizing the
arithmetical ether as the basis upon
which to work and, hence, the machine
would adjust itself to the constant
accruement whilst we, denizens apart,
would remain exactly the same size
whilst the machine itself expanded about
us to incomputable dimensions.
“Pelathon,” I said aside, as one day
we watched this monster in construction
beneath the powers of the invisible in-
tellectuals, “what do you make of the
conception that time doesn’t exist? It’s
all nonsense, don’t you think?”
His little eyes sought my face. “That
depends, friend Vernon. For the mo-
ment I was strongly inclined to dis-
believe, then I remembered that these
people are enormously advanced in
knowledge beyond us and, as such, there
may be something to their theory.
AST-6
MATHEMATICA PLUS
97
“Frankly I now lean to their view.
In an unchanging universe, where mat-
ter and energy forever maintain the
perfect balance, it is, in cold fact, very
hard to appreciate where the time ele-
ment does exist. As I see it now, en-
lightened by these people, time cannot
exist in an unchanging universe, where
nothing can be added or subtracted.
Since neither of these two states are
permissible of annihilation without
destroying the whole, they of themselves
negate the possibility of time.”
“Hazy, but I gather the drift,” I said.
“You’ll be telling Farrington and me
next that we’ve never done anything at
all during this trip! That all this is
one grand, terrific illusion.”
Pelathon said nothing, but I detected
a peculiar expression on his little face.
He turned aside to watch the assem-
blage of the mathematical machinery
within the monstrous globe. I watched
too, pondering over matters, wishing I
understood more of the laws relating to
space and time.
I ruminated thus through the days
and nights and arrived no nearer a solu-
tion, then, at last, I was forced to rele-
gate it to a back shelf of my mind as
the day for the journey’s start arrived.
The monster sphere was completed.
Under 2816’s directions we entered
the roomy control chamber and stood in
a group on the softly padded floor, 2816
himself a little way in front of us. In
silence he surveyed us from head to
foot.
“Without your coming, this ines-
timable gift to the science of the chosen
would never have been possible,” he
said quietly. “Because the chosen read
from your minds, via the ether absorber,
the mathematical nature of the machine
that took you to the beginning, so they
were able to conceive this mathematical
machine to take you to the ending, and
back here again. But with one differ-
ence ! This sphere is remotely controlled
by the chosen. You, of yourselves, will
AST— 7
do nothing save observe and study how
the total of universal figures works out.
When that total has been achieved, the
machine will automatically return here
and you will bring your story. Again
the chosen thank you for your service.
Now you must start.”
2816 melted into thin air and vanished.
Accustomed by this time to apparent
miracles we strolled almost unconcern-
edly to the gigantic observation window
of the sphere, turning our heads only
once as the air lock automatically closed
and sealed itself. Almost immediately
afterward the amazing driving force of
the globe began to function. The
mathematical .machines began their
steady ticking and deliberate checking
and rechecking ; the converters throbbed
with the low hum of perfect, steady-
flowing energy.
IN the very center of the monstrous
central power plant the living brain of
figures, master controller of all the
sphere’s engines, began its dissipation
and accruement of invisible figures, ab-
sorbing and transforming, creating a
slow and inevitable expansion as we
began to move through the figurative
ether toward the infinitely remote total
of all things.
Silent, absorbed, we stood by that
monstrous window, gazing out on the
strange world of Xulon. As we
watched, and the figures comprising it
naturally added up to their final solu-
tion, we saw it apparently grow old, die
with amazing rapidity, and become a
dark, dead world. Then, presently,
even this passed away and there was
left naught but a swirling cosmic dust
that slowly changed into the black- in-
visibility of space itself.
I laughed shortly as I beheld these
things. “Then the chosen say there is
no time !” I exclaimed derisively. “Good
Lord, this proves it ! This machine is
moving in time — must be !”
“No, friend Vernon.” Pelathon shook
98
ASTOUNDING STORIES
his massive head very deliberately. “Not
time — only change! Indeed, hardly
change even. No time has passed be-
cause this universe is, in essence, the
same. Truly the world of Xulon has
vanished, but the exact amount of energy
remaining in the universe is unaltered.
A matter world has vanished and
changed itself into various forms of
energy. Somewhere else, too, there has
probably been an interchange — a re-
assemblage of the perfect balance.
That, as I said before, is not time —
only a change of state.”
“It’s too much for me,” I grunted dis-
gustedly. “To me, Xulon grew old.
Still, I can see dimly what you’re driv-
ing at.”
Pelathon said no more and we turned
our attention to the window again.
Even as we did so the width of the
window grew wider ; the chamber in
which we stood expanded, too, with a
gradual yet inevitable progression. Add-
ing to its own total of figures as it un-
doubtedly was, there was, of course, no
other course for it to pursue if the con-
stant level of the universe was to be
maintained. For in proportion as the
figures outside mounted up and reached
their totals, so the balance had to be
maintained by the expansion of the ma-
chine in absolute mathematical align-
ment. We, excommunicated from that
universe and every part of it, were in
rather an awkward position, gradually
becoming Lilliputians in a steadily
widening wilderness.
“Say, what’s ultimately going to hap-
pen to this sphere?” I asked worriedly,
looking about me. “If this is only the
start of the journey, where are we going
to be at the final total ?”
Pelathon’s face contorted into a smile,
his rabbit teeth glinted in the light.
“There, I believe, the chosen made a
gigantic blunder,” he proclaimed calmly.
“It was not my place to tell them, so
eager were they to make this experiment
— but I certainly believe that we shall
never return to relate the ending. At
least not by going back."
“Meaning what?” I demanded.
“What are you looking so smug about?”
“Forgive me, friend Vernon; I’ve no
wish to irritate you. All the same I do
believe we’re entering on something re-
markable. I can’t be sure though until
the journey is ended.”
“Some help you are,” I said, and
turned back to my watching, my mind
revolving round absolute paradoxes.
FOLLOWING the disappearance of
Xulon into some indeterminate form of
energy, there began for us a journey
that was a complete chain of unexpected
things, defeating by far that almost com-
fortable journey to the beginning. In
that instance we had been in perfect
tune with the altering conditions, but
here we were faced with complex and
unexplainable occurrences as we pro-
gressed through an endless expansion
to that final and still incomputable solu-
tion of all things.
Gradually, through that ever-widening
window, we beheld what was apparently
the constant birth and death of suns,
galaxies and multigalaxies, and enor-
mous nebulae, all of these so unified in
their mathematical position in endless
space that it was hard to detect which
was which. Monstrous chasms of star
dust gleamed with a luminescence all
their own in the profound immensity of
space ; island universes, mere shadowy
glows upon this blackest-black back-
ground, shone from remote corners of
the limitless expanse.
All of this was normal, understand-
able, much the same as photographs in
an astronomy textbook. Here was noth-
ing but what could be understood. Here
lay the very material birth and death of
cosmic energies, birth and decay in all
its stark, unshorn reality. This much
we could understand.
It was later that we came to face
changes that baffled us. They came at
MATHEMATICA PLUS
99
a time when we had lost all concept of
our position in space, when the chamber
in which we stood had become a vast
emptiness, its walls hidden in remote
distance, the curved ceiling incredibly
high above us in an oddly malformed
mass of shadows. So high was it indeed
the lights within it failed to cast their
glow. We stood there in silence on the
gently expanding floor, Lilliputians gaz-
ing upon the farthest ramparts of
changing infinity, before a window that
stretched now for numberless miles.
Space now had indeed changed. The
procession of birth and decay was over
— a newness, something entirely un-
suspected was occurring. The stars
gleamed with a steady and unaltering
light: nowhere was there a birth, no-
where a death, nowhere a blazing forth
of unutterable brilliance to proclaim a
new arrival in the celestial order of
things, nowhere an extinguishment.
Space seemed to have achieved one
great steady level. But it did not last
for long.
One by one the stars began to snuff
out like candles — completely and utterly,
as though an infinite circle were being
drawn and closed about them, and within
that circle every known energy and
radiation was being obliterated. We
watched, Farrington and I, open-
mouthed, this slow advance of an
unknown and complete annihilation. Pel-
athon seemed untroubled, only thought-
ful, his little chin sunk on his narrow
chest, brooding eyes on the strange
change.
Still the infinity globe expanded, and
as it did so the ever-narrowing circle
decreased in width. Star after star van-
ished, galaxies and vast extra-galactic
nebulas were swallowed up in the maw
of that great and terrible darkness.
Nothing seemed to withstand it, from
the most brilliant incredibly hot sun to
the weakest dead star. All, absolutely
and completely, were being blotted out.
And at last there was only one perfect
circle of stars ; elsewhere, so far as the
eye could see, was an absolute blank in
which nothing — absolutely nothing — ex-
isted.
And, at last, even that final friendly
circle passed, too. Space was empty.
“There is the ending,” murmured
Pelathon, turning at last, only vaguely
visible to us now through the weak re-
mote beams from our incredibly distant
ceiling lights. “We have proven the
second, and not the first, law of ther-
modynamics to be correct. The first
law, as you know, maintains an eternal,
changeless state ; the second holds not
with the destruction of energy as regards
its amount, but in the matter of its
form.
“Outside here we still have all the
energy we had to start with, but it can
no longer change. The vast mathe-
matical formula has almost worked itself
out to final cancellation, but even yet
the total is not complete. The last ergs
of energy are not yet spent. Ah! Just
as I expected!”
WE LOOKED UP in alarm at that,
Farrington and me, for simultaneously
with Pelathon’s last words the infinity
globe began to rock and creak mightily.
The far-distant central power plant was
glowing with a brilliant green light ; dis-
tinctly to our ears, despite the distance
away, came the ever-mounting rattle and
click of the checking mechanisms.
“The dam thing’s collapsing !” I
shouted hoarsely. “Pelathon! In
Heaven’s name, what’s going to happen
now?” I clutched his thin arm franti-
cally in the gloom.
“Only that which I expected,” he re-
plied coolly, maintaining his balance
with some difficulty on the rocking floor.
“If for a moment we consider there is
such a thing as time, the material weight
of this universe has changed perpetually
into radiation as we have progressed
forward to this penultimate point. Ig-
100
ASTOUNDING STORIES
noring the time factor, which seems the
most logical thing to do, the figures that
formed this universe have all been ab-
sorbed by that machinery ! Everything
has now been added up save the machine
itself, and it is inevitable law that must
also now pass away to complete the
issue. We will be cast adrift. There
can be nothing else. We do not belong
to this universe.”
“Adrift!” I gasped huskily. “In that
darkness and friendless cold? Without
light, heat, radiation — without anything?
This, then, we were faced with — unable to understand the
MATHEMATICA PLUS
101
Alone for perhaps evermore in an
eternal sea of emptiness? Lord, no!
My whole being screams out against it !”
Pelathon remained unmoved ; his
calmness was exasperating at times.
“You forget that the three of us are
indestructible, surely,” he commented.
“Besides, there is no other way — no
other way,” he concluded grimly, as we
beheld the walls and floor of the infinity
globe, dimly gray before us, begin to
vaporize and reveal through their former
solidity a vision of the infinite blackness
outside.
“Pelathon, did you know this would
happen?” I demanded of him.
“I admit that I thought it might,
friend Vernon — that was why I said I
believed we’d never return. A tree can-
not go back to its seed — no more then
could the remote control of the chosen
on Xulon bring this machine back once
it had reached the grand ultimate total.
In space there is only forward — one
first vaguest implications of it all
102
ASTOUNDING STORIES
way. Just as energy always flows one
way ”
He broke off and stood rigid as the
walls began to vaporize further. Far-
rington, his face grim, came to my side
and looked between his feet at the vision
of impenetrable darkness below.
“Well, guess this looks like the fin-
ish,” he muttered, evidently as com-
pletely unable, as I was, to realize we
were deathless. “Good hunting, old
man.”
I muttered some husky response, then
that which we were expecting suddenly
happened. The infinity globe completely
dissolved. Walls, floor, ceiling, machines
all merged into one gigantic spurt of
unguessable energy that instantly
changed back into the perfect scheme of
figures. We dropped into the infinite
cold and darkness, aware of our former
sphere as a slowly dying spot of light
in the all-embracing dark. We had
reached the ending, yes, but — what now ?
III.
WHY we did not encounter instant
death the second we found ourselves
free in emptiness is still a riddle that
eludes me — though the solution was, I
suppose, plain enough to be understood.
Yet, so utterly paradoxical was its na-
ture, I found myself flatly refusing to
believe it.
For myself I realized, with a sudden
cold shock of alarm, that my body had
gone! Yes, my lovely, immortal form
had utterly disappeared ! I had appar-
ently become a disembodied mind alone
in an endless darkness, that had no
depth, no substance, no form — was
naught but a colossal, stunning vacuum.
And yet my mind remained perfectly
clear; there was no cloudy oppression,
no sense of pain, only an awful and
overpowering loneliness that suddenly
swept in upon me. I was afraid of this
terrible dark, this graveyard of stagnant
energy.
Then, when I felt I could no longer
endure the profound mysticism of it
all, I distinctly knew the thoughts of
Pelathon were registering in my mind.
Had I been possessed of vocal chords
I certainly would have emitted a yell
of delight — or at least its equivalent,
since there was no air.
“Have no fear, friend Vernon,” his
thoughts reassured me. “We are defi-
nitely proving indeed that there is no
time. These occurrences are exactly as
I computed to myself. We have all
three of us lost our immortal bodies,
which in the first place proves the very
obvious fact that this spent universe is
somewhere within your own body and
mine. Otherwise we would not have
been transformed to form the ultimate
total here.”
“But how comes it that our minds are
not impaired? Surely they too should
pass into the infinite and silent void that
surrounds us?”
“Why should they ? Thoughts, as
you learned long ago, are purely figures,
part and parcel of the surroundings we
possess now. Long ago you died and
lost your own bodies, but your thoughts
lived on because they were the mathe-
matical basis of your real entities. So
it is again now. A sum of figures is
active so long as it is adding or totaling
up. When the total is reached the
figures become inactive — but they are
still ' there. That surely is obvious
enough ?
“At the moment we have reached
totality — all change has ceased, and yet
the figures that form the emptiness it-
self are still there. It is inconceivable
that this particular total can end here,
unless indeed there really is an element
of time. I believe there is not. I’m con-
vinced of it. If that be so, then this
ultimate total of figures must again
change to form the basis of themselves.”
“That too is inconceivable,” came the
vibrations of Farrington.
"Why is it? That figures still live
MATHEMATICA PLUS
103
even when totaled up is an indisputable
fact ; we have a small instance of it in
the fact that even now we can exchange
figures in the form of thoughts. No-
where in this vast space can a single
formation of thought figures be dead.
This space is one great sea of intelli-
gence, drifting, drifting To what?
To a state that must forever either prove
or disprove the existence of time.”
‘‘There's an old theory, by Earthly
scientists, that, out of the heat death of
a universe, new protons and electrons
must form,” came Farrington’s commu-
nication. “Is that what you mean,
Pelathon ?”
“Not altogether, but it is a possible
simile. Out of figures, if there is no
time, must be born something else,
otherwise the figures themselves could
never have come into being in the first
place. Hence, out of this sea of intel-
lect into which all figures have now been
changed there must be born something.
Do you not feel a steady movement?
You cannot behold it because movement
is only relative to its surroundings, and
here there are no surroundings. Never-
theless, the conviction cannot surely be
only my own belief ?”
With that Pelathon’s communication
ceased and I dwelt upon the portent of
his comments, gradually realizing that
he had spoken truth. There was a sepse
of movement, a dim stirring in the
eternal emptiness, a conviction of slow
progress in a circular direction, as
though moving toward some unguess-
able cosmic vortex. And, as the progress
continued, I became aware of other
things — of unexpected thoughts and
conclusions.
Immense conceptions began to steal
into the formerly locked chambers of
my disembodied mind, concepts that at
once both puzzled and appalled me with
their immense and infinite grandeur. I
was becoming, as I drew nearer to that
unknown nucleus, a god — a mind dom-
inating all others, receiving a constant
and steady flow of tremendous mathe-
matical thoughts in the midst of which
I saw, crystal clear, the beginning and
ending of all mental conception.
Dimensions, space, figures — they
were childish ; things now perfectly un-
derstood— and yet, writing now, with
none of these attributes, my memory is
unable to recall a single one of those
colossal discoveries. At that time I was
literally deified, and so, I found later,
were Pelathon and Farrington.
Then into the midst of this accumula-
tion of thoughts burst another communi-
cation from Pelathon.
“I was right ! The vast thoughts that
are in this universe are converging into
one enormous central formation — a new
arrangement of figures which must lead
to ”
His communication ceased. In any
case, I was not registering any more.
The sense of movement was now tre-
mendously obvious. Thoughts — ideas —
problems solved even as they began.
Time, space, energy, figures, rattled
across my disembodied mind with bewil-
dering reiteration.
Faster — faster, toward the vortex.
Faster. Knowledge swept in one
gigantic peak
Then I was alone. Puny and tiny
again — every scrap of that erudition torn
and whipped from my remembrance.
I CAME to myself by very slow de-
grees, out of that impossible and cloudy
darkness, a darkness blacker than death
itself and filled with thoughts now be-
yond all concept.
The first thing that astounded me was
the realization that I had a body again
— a clumsy body, badly formed, and un-
wieldy in action. Beside me lay Far-
rington and Pelathon, stretched supine
upon a brilliantly polished floor. I
studied their changed and curiously
bestial appearances in silence, watching
rather dully their gradual return to con-
sciousness. Something was knocking
104
ASTOUNDING STORIES
insistently in my mind ; the dim, vague
hangovers of that incredible transit from
a dead universe began to clear from my
mind — I was haunted by the belief that
I had been here before in exactly the
same circumstances. I hardly dared to
look up — yet involuntarily I did so.
I saw frozen amazement on the faces
of Pelathon and Farrington as they did
likewise. There it was — the supreme
mathematician ! Artisan of creation
itself ! **
For the second time in our numbing
voyage through eternal figures we were
encountering him — that astounding phe-
nomenon of dimensions, figures and
angles who flung forth — as on our pre-
vious visit — its communications in the
form of vibrations analyzed down to
terms of wave length.
Utterly unable to move, too confused
to understand what it all meant, we
watched the parade of mathematical
thoughts before us, a parade which hid
the supreme mathematician temporarily
from view.
“You three, crude manifestations of
figures, comprise the figures of a uni-
verse yet to be created. The sum total
of a universe formed me, and yet I shall
form it, because there is no time.”-
Of all the enigmatic observations we
had come across, this, undoubtedly, was
without parallel. I raised myself up to
make an answer, to grapple with it, but
the voice of Farrington forestalled me.
“You are the supreme mathematician.
We have met before. You endeavored
to form us into canceling figures, but
Si-Lafnor, a scientist, saved us from
destruction. Now, by some incredible
twist of time, we’re back again with
you. How do you explain it?”
“I repeat — time is nonexistent,” the
symbols responded. “Out of the intel-
lect of the universe from which you
have come I was formed, and yet I ex-
isted before that universe because I
created it. Hence, universes, myself,
and all known things, never begin and
never die, because there is no time.”
“You mean that out of all that vortex
of intelligence, toward which we were
drifting, you were born?” Farrington
demanded amazedly.
“What else? And, since you did not
belong to that exact universe you were
formed not unnaturally as remainders
of figures from the total. Had it been
otherwise you would have been absorbed
by me into my form. Ultimately, fol-
lowing immutable law, you are bound
to readjust yourselves to your normal
position in the vast scheme of things.
“You say you have been here before.
In that observation you are including
time. You have not been before; you
are yet to come ! The man, Si-Lafnor,
who will come to your aid in the un-
thinkably distant totality of things, is
not yet created — but he will be, because
out of you I shall create him. Other-
wise how could he have been born ?”
My mind was completely unable to
take in the infinite complexity of this
paradox. I failed utterly to apprehend
its meaning and so, I believe, did Far-
rington. Pelathon, though, was clearly
deeply intrigued — and most certainly
quite unafraid of the supreme mathe-
matician. But then, I reflected, Pela-
thon had not seen the supreme one be-
fore ; on the previous trip he had been
left behind. This time things might be
different.
“Am I permitted to ask the supreme
mind questions?” he inquired at length.
“Proceed.”
“FIRSTLY, since you have obviously
disproved the concept of time, there is
absolute proof that every known living
thought, every vibration, is immovably
interlocked. You came into being
through the break-up of intellectual
forces too vast for us to grasp. In turn,
you thought of, and mathematically
created, a colossal main universe, within
MATHEMATICA PLUS
105
which there would be countless millions
of other universes, the figurative atoms
and electrons comprising its structure.
Of two of those universes we three are
part, my two friends of the Earthly uni-
verse, and myself of another.
“When those figures were complete
they resolved themselves back again into
their original formation ; out of them,
therefore, you were born, to repeat
again the same process. And, through-
out that process we have come and gone
— and will continue to come and go
until unguessable death wipes out all
traces of cosmic creation.
“At an inconceivably remote period
we came once before. Out of us- you
begot the basis of figures which created
one Si-Lafnor. He in turn created an
Earthly universe, to which my two
friends belong, and they in their turn
created my universe. But basically their
conceptions were only yours, because
you are the fount of all knowledge. Am
I correct?”
“Perfectly,” the symbols responded.
“To you it is a paradox, but as you will
be forced to follow it through to the
end, right up to the actual proving of a
timeless state, you will comprehend bet-
ter when your journey is ended.”
“But,” I said in bewilderment, “if we
are to become the basis of the figures
that will create Si-Lafnor, we shall have
no material bodies ! Then what’s going
to happen?”
“On your last journey — or on the
journey you will make, whichever you
prefer to call it — you died on a world
called Mathematica. There you lost
your Earthly bodies. You will resume
them when the figures comprising these
bodies have gone to make up Si-Lafnor.
You perceive how everything dovetails
into place?”
"But how is it possible to resume
bodies that are dead ?”
“Since there is no time they never
died You will see. Do not make the
supreme materialistic error of thinking
of your bodies and your minds as the
same identical set of figures. Each is
independent. The figures forming a
body are purely the carriers of the
figures forming the mind. One can have
a million matter bodies by the alteration
in figures, but only one set of figures
can comprise the mind.
“Conceive of it this way: Upon a
piece of paper you execute an addition
sum and supply jts total. That, we will
assume, comprises the total of your
mind. Now, you execute the same addi-
tion sum on a hundred different sheets of
paper. The figures which form the elec-
trons and protons of the paper’s make-
up, are all different, but the figures
making the total on the papers are all
the same. That cannot be changed.
Hence you can use as many sheets — or
bodies — as you wish, but with only the
same total each time.
“Only at the destruction of a universe
do all the totals converge to one final
grand total — and that was exactly what
happened in the universe you just left —
but since you three were not actual
parts of that universe you formed into
independent figures, to be resolved by
me back into your rightful place, or,
more clearly, adjusted into your correct
position in the scale.”
“And, presumably, every universe
must have something as its basis of
figures?” I asked quickly. “Not neces-
sarily material bodies?”
“Not necessarily, no. Something —
whatever the creative mind, working
under my own computations, decides.
And now, to complete the process of
figures it is essential that you move on-
ward in the creation of Si-Lafnor and
his planet, Mathematica.”
“One moment !” I interrupted hastily.
“I believe I detect a flaw somewhere!
Pelathon was not with us on our last
visit. How do you account for his pres-
ence now?”
106
ASTOUNDING STORIES
"The normal Pelathon is not with you
even now — only a motley array of fig-
ures supporting his mind. The real
Pelathon, on your last visit, unwittingly
placed himself in a state of suspended
animation on Mathematica, during
which time his mind was here, but un-
resolved. Is that clear ?”
“Well — er — not altogether,” I an-
swered vaguely. “Still, I’ll ask no more
questions ; I have not the temerity. We
await your final decision, supreme one.”
"My final decision is made,” the sym-
bols responded, and with that the abode
of the supreme mathematician snapped
out like the turning of a switch and we
were adrift again in the incomputable
immensities of space.
IV.
THIS was the only occasion on which
I sensed no transition through space.
There was blackness certainly, but no
real concept of it. My only recollection
is that I opened my eyes and looked up
directly into blazing ceiling lights, hurl-
ing forth a barrage of brilliance that re-
flected from a hall of machinery —
machinery immediately familiar. I did
not dare to move ; very slowly I began
adjusting my mind to normalcy. Gently
I felt my limbs. Breeches? A rough
gray shirt? I shot up with a jerk, as-
tounded. I was in possession of the
body that had formerly died ! My own
body! The body of Vernon Walsh, of
New York, Earth. Then this must be
the
Mathematica! Planet of Si-Lafnor.
Abode of the creator of the Earthly uni-
verse.
I scrambled to my feet, and beside
me Pelathon and Farrington, both nor-
mal again, did likewise. Pelathon,
despite the return of his normal body,
seemed unworried by the change, but in
the eyes of Farrington I read blank
astonishment.
“Do you begin to realize ” I began
dazedly — then I stopped and looked up
as there began to approach us the famil-
iar figure of Si-Lafnor himself, just like
a more erudite edition of Pelathon, with
his glittering metal cranium support
affixed to his thin, wizened shoulders.
Immediately his thought waves came to
us.
“So you completed the cycle?” he
asked in faint amusement. “I half ex-
pected that you would, but it was worth
the experiment to prove time to be non-
existent. You appreciate, of course, that
out of your former bodies I was born?
And you realize that out of a certain
machine — in which you imagine you
traveled here — the Earthly universe will
be born?”
“But it is born!” I yelled. “We’ve
come from it! For Heaven’s sake, Si-
Lafnor, don’t you start flinging para-
doxes about !”
“I will endeavor not to,” he assured
me. “But you will realize, from what
the supreme mathematician told you —
and I read this from your minds — that
thoughts are interlocked, which negates
time ? Hence, you bring to me a perfect
conception of what your universe is like ;
I, in turn, build upon those thoughts and
create your universe, and you yourselves
are literally the basis of it. Your
thoughts are, at least.
“Truly, it appears to you as though
you have come from it, which in a sense
is correct to your matter-bound bodies.
But the real truth is that you have both
come from it and are going to it because
time, being nonexistent, is akin to an
endless circle without beginning and
without end. Understand?”
“I’ll be damned if I do!” I almost
snarled back. “It may be child’s play to
you to sort out these enigmas, but we’re
sick to death of the perpetual puzzles
that surround us. Surely you remember
us from the last time? Don’t say that
we never came at all ! Remember ?
MATHEMATICA PLUS
107
When you made us indivisible so that
we might esca.pe the supreme mathema-
tician's cancellations ?”
“Certainly I remember,” Si-Lafnor
assented, still with that faint trace of
amusement in his thoughts. “You ar-
rived here having, as you believed, sub-
tracted yourselves from the Earthly uni-
verse. You believed you could never
return to it, because at that time you be-
lieved time to be a very actual concept.
“I perceived that out of your coming
there was an excellent opportunity to
juggle cosmic mathematics and prove
for myself the problem of time. I al-
ways believed it did not really exist, but
I had never been able to prove it be-
cause it would have entailed my own
cancellation. Hence my making you
three indivisible — or eternal — gave me
my opportunity. I am afraid, my wan-
dering friends, that I played upon you a
very complicated form of joke.”
“JOKE!” echoed Pelathon almost in-
dignantly. “In what way?”
“Well, in the first place I realized by
the very fact that you arrived here on
Mathematica that time didn’t really
exist. That was proved even then by
one very indisputable fact which even
you, my friends, will understand. Re-
move one atom of energy, annihilate
one atom completely and destroy its
energy, and it would mean the end not
only of your universe, but of every
known universe — the complete and final
extinction of all cosmic creation.
“And you came and tried to have me
believe that you had left your universe
forever behind you! That I knew was
quite Impossible, because had you done
so creation itself would have passed
away and you would never have come.
I would not have been here; neither
would the supreme mathematician have
been in being. Therefore I realize you
had never actually moved from your
own universe !”
“Never moved from it !”’ Farrington
yelled. “But that’s ridiculous! Why,
we crossed infinity — down, down ”
“Wait, my friend,” Si-Lafnor inter-
vened. “I realized that I could prove
then quite clearly whether time existed
or not, after I rescued you from the su-
preme mathematician. I promised to re-
turn you to a universe which would be
an exact duplicate of your own ; I
promised, too, to pass you there by the
foreshortening tenth dimension. I did
pass you through the tenth dimension,
but not to a duplicate of your universe
— only to the next formation of figures
existing beside those of your Earthly
universe.
“Hence you arrived in a space in
which you believed you had no part.
Actually, mathematically, you were in
your own universe, but hopelessly out of
tune with its figures. Bluntly, you had
been moved from the top of an addition
column to the bottom. There you were
on very strange ground, but, despite
your position, the total remained un-
affected.
“I realized that you would pass
through the cycle of that other universe
and come back to the starting point — if
time were indeed a negligible factor.
You proved that fact far beyond my ex-
pectations ; you proved the beginning
and the end because you saw how the
interlocked thoughts of that universe
brought into being the creator of all
things — the supreme mathematician.
“He, in turn, created me out of your
surplus bodies — again notice the action
of interlocked thought; that is, the past
and present thought being really one —
and you resumed the bodies that had
apparently died here. Hence you actu-
ally never moved at all. The only dif-
ference was that your minds shifted up
and down the column. The figures com-
prising them were forced, by my efforts,
to change places with other figures. You
didn’t affect the total; hence you were
108
ASTOUNDING STORIES
bound to come back to where you
began.”
“But you said a little while ago, Si-
Lafnor, that we have given you the idea
to create our universe. How can that
be if, according to you, we’ve come from
it?”
“I spoke literally to make myself
clear to you. When will you realize
that you have come back to the begin-
ning again? To the time when your
universe was about to be created by me,
sponsored by the underlying computa-
tions of the supreme mathematician him-
self. Nothing can come into being with-
out a conception of it to start with.
That is logic. You have completed a
cycle and know the universe you have
come from. At this stage I know noth-
ing of it, save from your thoughts — and
therefore I shall create it.”
“Theui you only know what happened
on our last visit from our thoughts?” I
asked quietly.
“Exactly.”
“Then what happens now?” Pelathon
inquired. “As I see it we are now,
according to a timeless state, in the posi-
tion we were on our last visit. Am I
right?”
“Entirely. The next process is, of
course, the building of the universe from
which you have come, and of which
your minds will form for me the figura-
tive basis. How my figures will build
up I do not know, but that they will
build correctly to the final consummation
is inevitable fact, otherwise you would
not be here. Now, my friends, I am
ready. If you are.”
HE TURNED to his mathematical
machines, those colossal monsters defy-
ing all Earthly comprehension. Here, at
least, we had evidence that Si-Lafnor
was not so intelligent as the supreme
mathematician, for he needed material
aid to put his figures into efifect; the
supreme mathematician, on the other
hand, accomplished it all by sheer force
of mentality.
There began again a mere repetition
of the miracles we had witnessed on our
former visit to this incredible planet —
the source of a timeless universe. Our
universe ! Small wonder the Earth-
bound brains of Farrington and me were
utterly confounded. Pelathon, though,
still clung to some fragments of knowl-
edge and stood silent, following the
mathematician’s every move, listening to
every change in beat of the titanic figura-
tive monsters as they began to trace
invisibly the mounting accumulation of
figures that would form the Earthly uni-
verse.
“It occurs to me,” Si-Lafnor vibrated
presently, turning from his tiny stool
before his control board, “that on this
occasion you would like to witness the
material transformation begotten of my
figuring. You shall do so. Watch.”
He turned to one side and shifted a
lever amidst the wilderness of controls.
A screen came into life, six feet square
and composed of a material that once
again had us guessing. ^
“In your world,” Si-Lafnor resumed,
“you have, as I read from your minds,
adding machines — tiny, insignificant off-
springs of these vast monsters which I
control here. These machines of yours
produce, by type upon a sheet of paper,
the visible proof of the figuring they
have made up. Is that correct ?”
“Perfectly,” said I, thinking of the
machine we had in the laboratory back
home.
“Very well then. Just as those adding
machines produce on paper the visible
form of figures, so this screen repro-
duces the visible change of etheric fig-
ures. You understand' that to create a
universe out of figures one must have a
basis to start from?”
“The supreme mathematician told us
that.”
“Exactly so. In this case the ma-
chine in which you came here will be
MATHEMATICA PLUS
109
the b3.sis of the figuring! What I shall
do is not to add any energy to the com-
plete whole which forms all universes.
I shall merely shuffle it about so that
your original machine which came from
Earth shall form the basis of your own
universe. At first you will behold this
shuffling via the screen, but as the
process goes on you are inevitably bound
to be absorbed into it, since you are part
of it. When that moment comes you
will leave Mathematica, and return
heme. Now — behold.”
The screen came into life — at least we
assumed it did. It changed from mean-
ingless gray into dead and absolute
black, a blackness that was not so much
darkness as complete absence of all
light. We stood looking at it ex-
pectantly. My mind, for some incon-
ceivable reason, was thinking that an
ordinary black Earthly dye would be
pale gray beside this utter negation of all
color.
“That is part of the empty space
which will become your universe,” Si-
Lafnor commented, his tentaculate hands
flying up and down his arithmetical key-
bboard. “You have understood, of
course, that not one universe but mil-
lions exist in the one perfectly circular
conception of figures that welds to-
gether all creation. To create another
universe it is simply a matter of ex-
changing the energy of one of these mil-
lions of universes without altering the
sum total of the whole. What I do is
to transform the figurative basis of
radiant energy from one of these uni-
verses and alter it into wave lengths of
less than 1.3 x 10-13cms, which in turn,
is transferred to that empty space
where your universe is to be.”
“But an energy of that wave length
doesn’t exist in the Earthly universe!”
Farrington protested.
“Not to your knowledge, no — but in
the beginning it does. Don’t you per-
ceive that the running down of this
energy, which to start with is of a higher
availability than any existing afterward,
will create a universe? Possessing, as
it does, a temperature of approximately
2,200,000,000,000 degrees it causes crys-
tallization which forms into electrons
and protons and, finally, atoms.
“Those things you understand ; I see
them only as changing figures, because
upon analysis ether is the abstract back-
ground upon which I work, and elec-
trons, protons and so forth all have a
certain mathematical basis. But, natu-
ralistically speaking, that is what does
take place. You can see it for your-
selves there.”
WE LOOKED back at the screen
and beheld gradually the changing of
that ultimate blackness into a dimly
swirling chaos, resembling molten lead
on the boil in the depths of a soot-black
caldron. Gradually, but inevitably,
galactic nebulae began to form — a swirl-
ing haze of light without understandable
formation.
“Why do we see all this at once?”
Farrington asked. “It is the work of
millions of years for a universe to
form.”
“Because there is no time, and because
it already exists,” Si-Lafnor responded.
“It is dead, alive, and dead again simul-
taneously, because the total of the figures
is perpetually, eternally, the same — no
matter what change there is. But the
moment of your own inclusion is ap-
proaching. Be ready; you will have to
form part of the perfect pattern. That
you are here at all is proof of that. Be
prepared.”
We tensed ourselves, hardly knowing
what to expect, our eyes fixed to that
screen. Then, with irritating slowness
the vast mathematical room began to
blur as though steam were obscuring the
vision. Si-Lafnor became a solitary
tiny speck in the midst of droning re-
motenesses ; the beat and rumble of his
vast machinery waxed and waned in our
110
ASTOUNDING STORIES
ears as they hovered on the very edge
of audible extinction.
The vision of a dividing, splitting
galactic nebulae on the screen faded and
vanished from sight. We were in a
dense fog in which there reposed no
light, no sound. And yet, through it all
pulsated the steady conviction of change.
Change ! Change ! W e could feel the
beat of it, and yet it did not affect us.
I uttered a strangled ejaculation, mo-
mentarily frightened, then I blinked in
sheer astonishment as our surroundings
gradually became clear again. I had
been prepared for something unusual,
but certainly for nothing so astonishing
as that which I did behold.
About us reposed the familiar control
room of the very space machine in which
we had journeyed from our own uni-
verse — from Earth ! Yes, everything
was the same. There, mated to the con-
trol board, reposed the subtracting ma-
chines which Pelathon himself had
fitted to the ordinary space-control
mechanism — those bars, keys, rotary
shafts, oil baths — all the paraphernalia.
Like a man rising from a trance I
looked about me, at the closed air lock,
at the rifles we had intended lifting from
the wall when we had formerly reached
Mathematica. Again the reiteration
passed through my mind. Everything
was the same.
“Good Lord!” muttered Farrington
weakly, sinking down on the wall couch.
“What in the name of chaos does this
mean ?”
“We’re moving too!” I gasped out
hoarsely, staring through the window.
“Look ! Mathematica is receding !”
In two flying leaps Farrington and
Pelathon were with me. We stared
down upon a brilliantly red world, a
world about which there clung the car-
mine haze of outflowing intelligence and
figure formation. Silent, astounded, we
watched the delicate ripples of unfading
color that oscillated and pervaded the
infinity through which we were now
passing.
“I — I don’t understand,” I breathed
at last, helplessly. “Our ship — our very
own space ship — is now going backward.
Traveling back to the source without our
controlling it! Look at the machines;
they’re working on their own! In the
name of sanity, Pelathon, can you ex-
plain it?”
He nodded composedly. “Certainly
I can. Si-Lafnor told us that the very
machine in which we came from our
universe — or rather yours — would prove
the very basis of the figures to create
your universe. Naturally the ship is
working on its own since Si-Lafnor is
the motivator behind the figures.
Slowly, surely, we are approaching, I
feel sure, the answer to the eternal riddle
through which we are now passing. But
what that magnificent answer is we can-
not yet tell. When the journey is ended
we can perceive, perhaps, the under-
lying truth of all cosmic creation.”
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“Again, you remember what Si-
Lafnor said? We never moved from
our own respective universes? There,
I believe, lies the answer. Later, we
can be certain.”
V.
THERE BEGAN for us, thereafter,
in reverse, a repetition of our journey
down to Mathematica, but this time our
vessel was forming the basis of the very
universe from which we had originally
come, a concept only possible to my
mind when I realized the absence of
time. Otherwise it would have been an
irreconcilable paradox.
Gradually we passed from the regions
of Mathematica into the blank space that
evidently formed the first step in the
building of new figures — figures which
our very own machine was creating,
backed by the remote control of Si-
MATHEMATICA PLUS
111
Lafnor. Thus, we came finally to the
first of the seven series of atomic solar
systems, passed through the midst of
these dead and barren worlds and
watched them change from visible
planets into complete electrons. Multi-
plication upon multiplication, the exact
antithesis of the subtraction we had
formerly encountered.
“It becomes quite clear what is hap-
pening,” Pelathon commented, as the
journey went on unhindered. “We
found originally that the machine-made
world of Vulcan was responsible for
thought reflection in the Earthly uni-
verse. That machine-made world, we
realized, was created by somebody then
unknown to us. We entered it and
found colossal machines within it. Be-
tween two copper pillars we found an
indeterminate mist, and it was there that
our journey of subtraction began.
“Now we know the truth. It is our
machine that is creating those machines
inside Vulcan even now, so, naturally,
we are bound to pursue an exact course
in reverse to our original one. You un-
derstand that at the moment, to our
minds, the Earthly universe is not yet
complete — where before it was quite
complete and being left behind. We are
now at the opposite end of the cycle —
coming, not going. By the time we land
back, the concept we call time will have
advanced to the exact point where it
was when we began. That is inevitable.
Thus, as I see it, we prove time to be
nonexistent. But that comes later.”
Farrington and I agreed with silent
nods. We were too puzzled to argue
further. We could only watch the grad-
ual reversion of our former trip, then,
as we began to behold, far ahead, an
apparent duplicate of the Milky Way
we realized that our journey was nearly
returning to the starting point. We
endeavored to check the period of the
journey by the chronometer, for Far-
rington and I slept several times in the
trip, but to our profound bafflement the
chronometer needle was turning back-
ward !
“The atomic Milky Way,” murmured
Pelathon, staring out on that incom-
prehensible swarm of living, burning
matter. “In other words the atomic
formation of the mist existing between
the copper pillars. Even at this mo-
ment the machines of Vulcan, outcome
of Si-Lafnor’s original figuring, are
building up by the progression and addi-
tion of this very machine. By the time
we arrive there those machines will have
formed and molded the universe — passed
it on to the very second, the very in-
stant, that we left it.”
Again Farrington and I kept silent,
watching the gradual condensation of
that murky, intra-atomic swirling into a
common haze that had no outlines — the
formation of pure mist — the second ulti-
mate stage of figuring. Thus we began
on the third set of figuring which
brought us, through many lingering
hours as it seemed, to an area of ever-
contracting space, yet in which we did
not seem to move either one way or
the other, but rather the ends of space
came to us. I remembered, vaguely,
how on our former trip this selfsame
emptiness had seemed to expand without
us shifting in the least.
In this wise the mist cleared and there
began to loom upon us the immense
machines that reposed inside the tenth
planet, Vulcan. The titanic copper pil-
lars, from which the mist had apparently
been bom, loomed vast and stupendous
about our expanding machine. Then,
these too passed into smallness as we
lifted out of the mathematical mist and
gazed down once more upon the mechan-
ized wilderness couched within this
figure-built world.
We were returning! That thought
dinned constantly into my mind with
vivid insistence. Or was it coming?
Well, coming or going it was the same
112
ASTOUNDING STORIES
to me, an Earthborn man. I was as
eager as an exile as I stared through
the window now, watching the ever-
widening gap in the surface of Vulcan
which we had originally made in order
to enter the uncanny planet.
And, at last, we emerged ! Our ship,
just as it had done previously, came to
a halt upon the twilight belt of Vulcan.
We viewed again the landscape of solid,
riveted metal, the glare of the homely,
bisected sun, and the very-near horizon.
Quietly Farrington and I turned to
look at Pelathon. He was smiling now.
“Well, we were right,” he commented.
“Our machine, by adding up constantly'
on its journey, produced the mist, the
machines of Vulcan, and Vulcan itself —
which in turn produced the universe by
multiplication of figures born of figures.
It is inevitable that we return to where
we began. Ah ! We’re off again !”
He was correct. The same precise
interval elapsed as on the previous trip,
but this time we moved backward into
space and left Vulcan far behind. It
struck me as an odd significance that,
on our return toward Earth, we passed
in reverse the Earth-Mars space liner,
at exactly the same split second as we
had passed it on the outward journey.
This incident more than anything else
served to convince me that time was
void, otherwise how could such a thing
have happened?
The short journey from Vulcan to
Earth seemed as nothing after the in-
credible things we had passed through.
We came ultimately to beholding the
friendly bulk of Earth far below, New
York stirring to dim life as we ap-
proached, then becoming quiet and
somber as we came even nearer. Again
—reverse ! When we had left New
York, the populace had been rising for
the day’s work; now we were shooting
back into the before-dawn hours. The
complexity of it ! I still did riot under-
stand, though from the dawning bright-
ness in the little eyes of Pelathon I was
inclined to think that he had discovered
a good deal.
SO WE CAME BACK, settling
gently in the same space hangar as that
from which we had started. Then, and
only then, did the mathematical ma-
chines cease to work. Dazed, utterly
puzzled, 1 led the way out of the ship
into the great hangar itself. Pelathon
and Farrington beside me, we moved
through the quietness of the summer
early morning toward my own home
and there, after Farrington and I had
had a meal, we dared to try and sum
things up.
“Clearly,” said Farrington, his eyes
on the wall calendar, “no time has
passed whatever! We started off on
August 6, 1981 — and yet the date is
still the same ! Since all calendars are
automatic and controlled by the Sun,
they can’t lie. What do you make of it?
According to that, we never made the
trip!”
“From the instant we started the
whole business to the approaching in-
stant when we stopped, no time at all
has elapsed,” commented Pelathon, in
profound thought. “We pursued a com-
plete cycle of mathematics from the
total, right through the figures of the
universe, to the total again — bringing
us back here to the period near the com-
mencement. By the same token, Far-
rington, your thoughts created my
universe, out of the metal which was
brought to you from Vulcan.”
Farrington nodded slowly. “Correct.
What’s to be done now ?”
“To create my universe you must have
the figurative basis to begin with. Quite
obviously that figurative basis in this
instance will be the very machine in
which I came to visit you from my own
world — which will pursue a similar
course to the trip we’ve just made, back
to my own universe again. You under-
stand ?”
AST— 7
MATHEMATICA PLUS
113
“Certainly I do, but since then you
transferred your machines to the space
ship so we could make our trip to
Mathematica.”
. “I know.” Pelathon smiled oddly.
“But perhaps I didn’t really? Suppose
we go to your laboratory and look.”
“Just as you like, but I don’t see the
sense in it.”
Pelathon said nothing and the three
of us left my home, presently gaining
the 'New York Institute of Scientific
Research, where Pelathon had origin-
ally arrived from his own universe. To
the profound amazement of Farrington
and me, there reposed, in the same spot
as at its arrival, the ebony box in which
Pelathon had come, complete with its
complicated enigma of controls, as
perfect as the moment of arrival.
“What the ” I began, trying to
shake off a curious dizziness that was
upon me. “Farrington, that box ”
“I know,” he said, passing a hand
over his forehead. “I feel as though —
as though there are gaps somewhere, as
though we’ve walked out of somewhere
into somewhere else. We ” He
paused and uttered a throaty shout.
“Good Lord, Vernon, look!” he ex-
claimed huskily.
I followed his gaze to the automatic
calendar on the wall ; my heart gave a
very noticeable leap. Somewhere, some-
how, we’d missed a gap of two weeks —
the exact period that had elapsed be-
tween our meeting Pelathon and our de-
parture from Earth ! The date now was
July 23rd! I recalled my dizziness and
the infinite unreality of everything, as
though hovering on the verge of a faint.
Now my head was clear again.
“Do you still not understand?” Pela-
thon asked, looking back at us after he
had climbed unconcernedly into his
machine.”
“No,” said Farrington hoarsely.
“Pelathon, what in ”
“This machine, which you thought of
originally when you conceived my uni-
AST-8
verse, is also the basis of my universe —
just the same as yours was of the
Earthly universe. Time is moving
backward — backward to the point where
your actual moment of contact with the
cycle began. That moment has not yet
come Now I return, to fit into the
perfect total from where I sprang.
Good-by, my friends.”
We could think of nothing to say.
We gaped as Pelathon’s machine became
hazy. He was a shadow amidst his con-
trols, and then the laboratory was empty.
Farrington turned and looked at me.
“Then — then he never really trans-
ferred his machinery to the space ship
at all?” he demanded. “Say, Vernon,
I think I’m going screwy ; I do really.”
“It seems ” I commenced, but
that was as far as I got. A vast oppres-
sion was upon my mind, weighing me
down intolerably. I think I staggered,
only to recover myself in what seemed
an instant later. My eyes immediately
focused on that confounded wall cal-
endar. It was still July 23rd, thank
Heaven! I must be suffering from the
effects of the journey, or else
I CEASED TO THINK; I believe
for a moment my heart stopped alto-
gether, for I noticed that, though it was
certainly July 23rd, it was in the year
1980! This time a year had mysteri-
ously slid away — completely and abso-
lutely ripped from all consciousness.
I looked at Farrington helplessly, but
he motioned to me to remain silent. For
the first time I noticed that others were
mysteriously present now in the labora-
tory, in particular Dawson of the space-
ways, the intrepid pilot who had brought
the Vulcanian metal for us to analyze.
As if in a dream, I heard him repeat
the very words he’d said on that former
memorable day, when the metal had first
come into our possession!
“You’d better have a care ! Don’t
think up any tigers, or anything of that
sort.”
114
ASTOUNDING STORIES
In response, the reflected thought pro-
duced for an instant a tiger amidst the
laboratory fittings. Densely, my mouth
lolling stupidly, I watched the re-
enactment of moments that I’d lived
over before, Heaven knew when — but
certainly on that same date of July 23,
1980!
Farrington looked at the metal again.
“Most extraordinary — like a mirror re-
flecting the image of oneself,” he said.
“Can it perhaps be a race of beings in
a universe, or in a world unknown?
Strange beings of a far higher intellect
than us? Guess I’m getting flavored
with the fantastic stories of the day.
Next thing I know I’ll be thinking up
some weird creature with bulging
cranium and calling him an idiotic name
like Pelathon, or something of that
nature.”
Dawson laughed good-humoredly and
lounged from the laboratory. The in-
stant the door had closed Farrington
turned and looked at me, steadily and
grimly.
“Vernon, at last I think I under-
stand," he said slowly. “We have now
come back to the beginning — to the mo-
ment when, by thought, I pictured Pela-
thon. A year afterward he came. But
actually he didn’t.”
“No?” I said feebly.
“Of course not. A year hasn’t passed
— even to-morrow isn’t here. We never
physically made the journey, old man.
We proved time to be timeless because,
in between, whilst I uttered that very
sentence to Dawson, we traveled un-
guessable distances, saw unguessable
things, traced creation from beginning
to end, and returned to carry on the
thread exactly where we dropped it.
We were apparently away all that time
— yet no time elapsed because we did
not move from here.”
“Then what You mean it was a
dream ?”
“Good heavens, no — it was real
enough. My thoughts did reflect on this
metal and bring Pelathon to us ; we did
see all those things. But don’t you un-
derstand even now that, there being no
time, we did not appear to vanish at all
— to Dawson and the others, that is.
Our energies were transferred into
eternal mathematics and, they being
eternal, the total remained the same, but
we shifted up and down the scale. All
that we saw was true, and must have
happened in, literally, no time. We
have a small instance of that in the tiny
span of a dream in which one can live
years. But now we return to the normal
Earthly course, the expenditure of
energy, the normal process of time.”
“But, a year hence, won’t Pelathon
reappear, though?” I demanded.
“No, because the year in between did
not actually exist in normal progress of
Earthly days. You remember how we
reeled through the gap up to here ? That
was all part and parcel of the whole.”
“Then indeed we have seen the be-
ginning and end and I begin to realize
some of the queer observations in
Ecclesiasticus,” I murmured. “You
know, about that which has been is now
But what happens to the Vulcan
metal now?”
Farrington closed the lid of the box
decisively. “As I remember it, on our
mathematical journey, we labeled it ‘Un-
classified’ and relegated it to the
museum. That’s exactly where it’s
going until, in the future, some power
may unlock the underlying powers it
possesses. It has shown us all creation,
so, for our part at least, we have noth-
ing more to learn.”
“True,” I said slowly, and from force
of habit glanced at my watch. All that
journey, all those aeons, confluences of
intellect, had taken exactly no time what-
ever. We had journeyed between Far-
rington’s intake of breath to utter a
word, and his exhalation at the finish of
it. We had never moved from the spot.
And yet
Well, I still wonder
The W 62 ’s Last Flight
by Clifton B. Kruse
W ITHIN the observation dome
which topped the mile-high
tower, the engineers and as-
trophysicists hovered tensely about their
instruments. The brilliant orange-red
sun of Mars glared with sinister fury,
its shimmering reflections destroying the
efficiency of telescopes and blue-flare
signal beams as if in willful malice.
Across the high-ceilingod room the
116
ASTOUNDING STORIES
rumbling voice of Dr. Hamison, in
charge of North Cap Observatory, beat
out a fresh detail of commands.
“Hart and Dirkins — connect spectro-
scope, Element H, to the light filter ex-
tension. Van Knerr, prepare the pro-
jection reflector — and continue to check
the flash receiver. Blast -such a sun!
I’ve never seen it so glaring — not a
thing can we see.”
The tall, dark-haired engineer, stand-
ing beside the perturbed director of the
great Martian observatory, watched the
fevered activity from narrowed eyes.
He turned quickly to Dr. Hamison,
grasping the elderly astrophysicist’s
shoulder firmly.
“But are you sure that the M31 had
deviated seriously from her course? At
this hour, aren’t all observations from
North Cap rather uncertain?”
“Am I sure? Do I know my busi-
ness?” Dr. Hamison quivered in impa-
tience. “Listen once, Master Engineer
Wiljon Kar. Twelve hours ago the
M31, the biggest passenger transport
of all the Interplanetary’s ships, blasts
from Athalon, Mars toward Venus.
According to the rules, the observatory
here must check the transport’s flight
so long as visibility is maintained. We
do that ! Then in two hours what hap-
pens? The M31 veers from her course
— noses at such an arc that she’s firing
toward Mercury — who is at perihelion —
and she will miss both Planets Two and
Three.
“Our flash marker signals a warning.
From the M31 we get a response that
they’re trying to straighten out. We see
the flares from the M31’s torps. Their
pilot’s evidently made a miscalculation
and is now correcting the course.
“Still we watch — three hours — four
hours — and the M31 still fails to follow
her arc toward Venus. Our flash
marker signals again — but with midday
approaching, the blue-flare beams can
scarcely be seen from our observatory
here — and the sun’s bright — unusually
bright it seems. The M31 blasts
steadily — sharply now toward Mercury
— now off at such an angle that we can-
not determine her purpose. Listen,
Wiljon Kar — the M31 is now over forty
million miles off her course— and she’s
headed straight into the sun!”
The silence which followed the doc-
tor’s pronouncement was electric. Un-
consciously men straightened themselves,
a quivering of mystery and awe tingling
nerve centers.
“Report, sir. The projection screen
is focused.” Dirkins’ voice rang loudly.
Immediately there assembled about the
instrument an unusually hushed and
perplexed group of scientists.
The Element H spectroscopic adjust-
ment had filtered the telescopic image
into a deep-gray picture. Now, before
their eyes, the M31, silver, whale-
shaped passenger liner of the spaceways,
was seen as she hurled herself madly
across the black void of space. Sharp
lines of yellow-green light represented
the intense fury of her torp blasts. But
the firing was erratic and the direction
unexplainably inconstant.
Wiljon Kar had elbowed his way to
the front of the troubled group. He
leaned forward now, studying each
minute fluctuation of the M31’s torp
blasts. His eyes were hard. His huge
fist balled into war-club hardness. Wil-
jon Kar, master engineer, knew the ways
of space ships as did no other man
alive. As commander of the special en-
gineering transport, W62, he had faced
and solved the most bizarre problems in
the face of death and lived to conquer
for the glory of the council.
“I do not understand !” Dr. Hamison
tugged nervously at his white hair.
“There is something decidedly unusual
about it.”
Abruptly Master Engineer Wiljon
Kar whipped around. Black eyes blazed
with irrepressible enthusiasm.
“Quick, Hamison, flash a special call
to Toronto, Planet Earth. Inform the
THE W62’S LAST FLIGHT
117
council that M31 is falling into the sun
— cause unknown. And tell them that
the W62 is making preparations to take
off immediately.”
IT WAS characteristic of Wiljon
Kar, once moved by a mysterious pro-
ject, to command, notwithstanding rank
or position. And equally true to form
was the instinctive obedience which all
men, scientist, soldier or lowly blaster,
rendered to him. Dr. Hamison hastened
to the flash marker’s station. Blue sig-
nal beams shot toward Earth even as
Wiljon Kar dropped groundward in the
tower’s lift.
“W62 is blasting spaceward,” Dr.
Hamison signaled feverishly. “Angling
two degrees sunward of Planet Mercury.
Observations of M31 still show erratic
course of her arc. Awaiting further
orders and developments. Signed, D. K.
Hamison, director, North Cap Observa-
tory, Planet Mars.”
FURIOUSLY, the W62 stabbed into
the blackness of spa.ce. Her power lever
held to first-limit acceleration, the trim
ship’s fire-belching torps streaked the
sky with living scars of white-hot flame.
The shriek of her gravity beams cut
deafeningly, and the stench of boiling oil
tingled even the toughened throats of
her space-hardened crew. Bending low
and tensely over the controls, Wiljon
Kar seemed to draw some super-
mechanical excellence from the roaring
machine. To his right, tight-lipped and
amazingly calm, the elderly Prock con-
centrated upon the hemispherical arc
computor.
“M31 is at a twenty-degree angle to
our course now.” Prock clipped his
words. “But — look once, Wiljon Kar —
we can never head her off before she
falls into the sun. Great Polaris, man
— we shall be too near the sun our-
selves !”
“Coordinate the angle three degrees
sunward of Mercury,” Wiljon Kar in-
terrupted. “And have Hals recheck the
compensator tubes.”
The W62 fired headlong with reckless
fury. Only an especially equipped
transport such as this could attain and
hold such a velocity. The incessantly
twanging dirge of her speed-tortured
drivers beat achingly into dulled ear-
drums.
Wiljon Kar had leaned back from the
controls only long enough to remove his
tunic. Sweat streamed down his mus-
cular body. Still he held the nerve-
destroying pace. Above him the plotto-
graph showed the steady drive of the
ship along an almost straight line from
Mars to a point dangerously midway
between the bleak, iron world of Mer-
cury and the flaming inferno of the
sun itself.
Once Prock had approached the tele-
scopic reflector plate, lifting the cover
shield a scant inch. As if the thing were
afire, searing blue-white light stabbed
across the room. Quickly Prock shut
down the cover. His gnarled old hands
pressed to momentarily blinded eyes. So
close to the sun were they that the in-
describable brightness seemed to burn
across fully half the sky.
The barest trace of a grin showed it-
self upon Wiljon Kar’s tautly drawn
lips. The intensely unbearable reflection
from the telescopic plate flashed terri-
fying danger ; nevertheless there was not
the slightest tremor in the young master
engineer’s steel nerves.
Above the whine of the gravity beams
Prock called out: “How much longer?”
Wiljon Kar shook his head. The
W62 continued its mad plunge. Now
Prock, too, removed his tunic. Swelter-
ing waves of heat radiated from the
walls of the plot deck. Both men were
breathing in quickened gasps.
“Recheck the angle,” Wiljon Kar
commanded.
Mopping the sweat from his long,
leathery face Prock turned wearily to
the arc computor.
118
ASTOUNDING STORIES
“Sacred nebulae! And it is to hell
itself that we journey. I say, Wiljon
Kar, I’m frying in me own fat.”
Heaving weakly against the port,
Lieutenant Mardico, guardsman of the
Flying Engineers, panted wheezily and
wrung the damp tufts of his wiry gray
beard. His red tunic was bared so that
the hairy chest glistened with beaded
perspiration.
“Control yourself, Mardico.” Prock
called over his shoulder. “You’ll get
your needed wetness back inside of you
soon enough.”
“But it’s steaming that I be,” old
Mardico bewailed. “And I tell you,
Prock, she can’t stand it — she’s got the
flaring fever. It’s killing her She’s
notable ”
“Who? What?”
“Bosco ! Look at her. But cast your
eyes upon the dying remnants of her
beauty. Ah, bitter indeed is life in the
spaceways. Poor Bosco. Poor, poor
little Bosco.”
THE tenseness seemed to snap and
break in Prock. He leaned upon the
arc computor, a strange mirth quivering
through his miserably hot body. He
could not help it. Old Mardico stood
there swaying in the doorway. In the
old guardsman’s extended hands there
huddled a tiny purplish ball of prickles.
Bosco, the tiny Neptunian flack which
Mardico had lately acquired, squirmed
restlessly as the old man fretted and
fussed in mothering solace.
“Never so near the sun should she
be, I tell you,” old Mardico blubbered
as he shifted his quid of weechie from
one cheek to the other. “Little Bosco,
I fear the end.”
“Align our position with M31.”
Wiljon Kar’s command cut sharply
across the plot deck. Mardico stiffened
to militaristic attention. Prock flew to
his instruments.
“Ready — she’s swerving sharply —
still fighting against the pull. Wait —
wait — wait, Wiljon Kar — here’s the
data. We can meet M31 at three point
nine sunward of Mercury — in less than
an hour.”
Hard lines of determination held
rigidly in the strong face of Master En-
gineer Wiljon Kar. He studied the
plottograph, fingers clutching control
levers fiercely. As if awaiting some
signaled command he braced himself in
the seat, stabbed the firing studs. W62
quivered, her shell grating with the
strain. In a staggering arc Wiljon Kar
sent the plunging craft seemingly di-
rectly into the Sun. Prock gasped,
clutched wildly to maintain equilibrium.
With a sluffing dump! the pulpous
body of old Mardico careened across
the plot deck to smash against a side
wall.
“Co-co-colossus !” Mardico sucked
noisily to regain his breath only to
scream it out again in lusty complaint.
“ ’Tis the engineers themselves as be
swimming in roulek. Wiljon Kar, you’re
drunk. You nearly killed her. Look at
Bosco’s spines — they’re getting black.
Prock! Wiljon Kar! Hear me!
You’re killing Bosco. You’re ”
Wiljon Kar’s voice roared out above
the inferno of heat and noise: “Call
Twombley. Have him try the blue flares
again. Keep signaling the M31 to con-
tinue nose blasts against the force.”
The narrow plot deck became hazy as
the heat waves cast forth their weird
distortion. Staggering to his feet, his
long, bony fingers rumpling the thin-
ning strands of his white hair, Prock
slumped toward the ship’s controls.
There was a fierce grin etched upon
Wiljon Kar’s colorless lips as he pre-
pared to turn the piloting over to the
elderly master engineer.
“Hold it — until we are within an-
choring distance of M31 — and keep in
touch with Twombley. The combined
power of both transports may break
that clutch — whatever it may be.”
Quickly now, Wiljon Kar was across
THE W62’S LAST FLIGHT
119
the plot deck. He was clawing at the
awkward bulk of a space suit in nervous
haste. Yet even as he hastened to don
the suit old Mardico was beside him.
Wiping the streams of sweat from his
bristly face, Mardico, too, scrambled
into a space suit. Wiljon Kar shook
his head. But Mardico seemed not to
trouble himself with such an attitude.
The wiry strands of his gray beard
stood out in determination. His steel-
gray eyes narrowed sharply and the pro-
truding jaw worked vigorously upon the
mouthful of weechie. For a brief mo-
ment the old man’s gaze held to the
stern look in the commander’s eyes.
Defiantly old Mardico spattered the far
wall of the plot deck with a yellow blob
of weechie. He locked the headpiece in
place.
Wiljon Kar merely shrugged his
shoulders. He should have known bet-
ter than to have permitted the old space-
man’s coming on this trip in such a con-
dition, even though refusal would have
broken the old fighter’s stout heart. Be-
hind the visor of his space cap old Mar-
dico was grinning triumphantly. His left
hand rested tenderly above the bulge in
his suit. Bosco was snuggled safely
against the hairy chest.
“To the observation port,” the master
engineer commanded. “Man the anchor
chains as soon as Prock fires them at
the M31. We’re going out.”
LIEUTENANT MARDICO waved
a broad salute, straightened his shoulders
proudly and spun about to clamber along
the ramp. Yet scarcely had he shuffled
beyond the first turn when a terrific
force caught him as if he were but a leaf
in a whirlwind. Mardico’s body car-
omed viciously from point to point as he
was hurled along the ramp a full quarter
turn of the ship.
His lungs were pressed free of air.
Sharp, blinding pains lightninged
through his head. For seemingly inter-
minable minutes the old guardsman lay
in a heap, sucking painfully for air.
His head swirled madly and the blood
strained his arteries in frantic readjust-
ment. Now he realized that he was
creeping forward upon hands and knees.
Where was he ? What had happened ?
Tears blurred his eyes and lashing pains
cut sharply through his head. He was
conscious of a weird, unnatural vibra-
tion of the W62. To his space-trained
senses the unbelievable velocity of the
transport became fearfully manifest.
The W62 was driving forward at a
speed which even her great torps could
not produce. Never before had his ears
tingled with such a sensation of speed.
But the motors were silent ! Old
Mardico staggered to his feet. Once he
attempted to call out, yet his lungs were
too sore to force any great volume of
sound through his throat. Had it not
been for the rugged protection of the
space suit, he realized, he would never
have survived such a blow. Even so,
his body must be a mass of bruises.
A soft murmuring aroused old Mar-
dico from his bleary-headed perplexity.
Now the murmuring was accompanied
by a restless stirring against his chest.
A shudder of fearful relief coursed over
the old man’s body. It was Bosco. The
little flack was alive. Feebly the strange
creature voiced its concern. Through
the thick padding of his space suit old
Mardico cuddled the little animal.
“Mardico — can you hear me — an-
swer Mardico, where are you?”
The old guardsman stiffened, the wiry
strands of his gray beard seeming to
stand out rigidly. That was Wiljon
Kar’s voice — a soft, plaintive whisper.
“Mardico! Mardico!” The tense
whispering cut sharply into old Mar-
dico’s punch-drunk brain.
“Wiljon Kar — ’tis your ghost I hear.
You’re not here arid yet to my ears
comes the stuff of your very speech.”
“Ghost be damned !” The whispering
changed to a deep-throated rumble.
“Get down here — at the port of the first
120
ASTOUNDING STORIES
storage deck. Quick — I’m pinned down
— ship’s gone wild. Something’s hap-
pened — I can’t move.”
With fierce, joyous energy old Mar-
dico spun about. As rapidly as his lum-
bering strides would bear him he made
his way to the farthest point of the
ramp.
“Glory and ’tis a spaceman’s luck,
Wiljon Kar, that we have both lived to
be batted about like balls in a game.
Wait — 'tis this port that’s sprung upon
his hinges ! Now steady — I’m lifting
her. Can you make it?”
As Mardico heaved upon the massive
port Wiljon Kar dragged his body along
the ramp. His face was drained of all
color and once a groan escaped his
tightly compressed lips.
“Wiljon Kar — you’re hurt!”
Mardico was upon his knees. Clumsily
he lifted the engineer’s weakened body.
But for a moment only did Wiljon Kar
relax in the old guardsman’s arms. He
seemed to shudder with some terrifying
energy, half struggled to his feet only
to slump back down upon old Mardico.
“Quick — help me — to the plot deck.
It’s got us — can’t you tell it ? That same
pull which is dragging M31 Our
space suits saved us — 'but Prock — and
the others ”
Mardico was on his feet. His old
eyes narrowed to hard slits. Taking a
quick, deep breath he bent down, grasped
the helpless body of the engineer and
hoisted him to his shoulder. Mardico’s
heavy, ponderous steps beat speedily
along the ramp.
The shrill scream of the transport
prodded taut nerves. Not once since
the mad acceleration had hurled them
along the ramp had the terrifying
velocity ceased. A strange, fatal calm
had gripped Mardico. Speedily, yet ten-
derly, he placed Wiljon Kar in the seat
before the W62’s controls. Immedi-
ately the old guardsman was across the
plot deck.
THERE WAS a choking pain in his
throat as he saw the huddled, inert form
lying on the floor. Prock, his long be-
wrinkled face as white as his hair, lay
motionless. Old Mardico’s hands shook
as he felt over the elderly engineer’s
body. He couldn’t see Prock now for
the hot tears beclouding his eyes.
“Prock! Prock!” The words tum-
bled foolishly from his quivering lips.
Twisting his space cap from the suit,
old Mardico laid his ear upon Prock’s
chest. Suddenly he straightened up.
Eyes gleamed brightly now. Joy so
sharp it seemed more pain than hope
burned through his nerves as he began
feverishly to apply spaceman’s first aid.
Prock was yet alive.
“Wiljon Kar” — Prock’s lips twisted
sharply with the effort to speak — “we’re
falling — into the sun — can’t last much
longer.”
Still holding the elderly engineer’s
head in his arms Mardico called loudly
over his shoulder.
“Prock’s saying something, sir —
something about falling into the sun.”
Clutching the pilot seat Wiljon Kar
was straining himself painfully in an
effort to appraise the flight indications
upon the plottograph. The expression
upon the engineer’s face stirred the be-
wildered old guardsman. He glanced
back down at Prock’s livid face.
Mardico’s jaw shot forward belliger-
ently. Laying the half-alive body upon
the floor as gently as he could, he opened
his own space suit., A tremble of ten-
derness caused his hands to shake as
he placed the purplish ball of Bosco
beside Prock.
“Orders, sir.” Mardico stood beside
Wiljon Kar, gripped the engineer’s
shoulder firmly.
Wiljon Kar’s eyes gleamed blue-black
with the keenness of his emotion.
“Mardico — listen — we can do it !
We’ve got to — and hurry. I can’t walk
— legs are bungled — got to depend on
you to get me to the observation port.”
THE W62’S LAST FLIGHT
121
The shrill vibration of the hurtling
transport sang with monsoon fierceness
as Mardico deposited Wiljon Kar within
the transparent dome atop the long, slim
hull. The vivid glare of the mountain-
ous sun burned through • their space
suits till even the light shields upon the
space caps were nearly useless. The
groan which escaped Wiljon Kar’s
clenched teeth was not from pain. For
the first time he knew the full impact
of a sudden, terrible fear. The nose
of the W62 was driving with incredible
madness toward the very center of the
blindingly white sun. In contrast, what
little of space was visible was a veritable
solid of black. That darker splotch to
their left might be Mercury.
Only the fact of its nearness made the
silver M31 apparent at all. Through
the barest crack between his fingers
Wiljon Kar studied the other ship.
“We can do it.” His words came in
gasps. “It’s our only chance — if I’ve
figured rightly. But quick, Mardico,
get back to the plot deck. Fire the re-
lease guns upon the anchor chains. I’ll
guide them from here. Then speedily
— round up the crew — all that be yet
alive — send them here — within a quarter
of an hour — and every man in a space
suit !”
Mardico was off, his thick body sail-
ing along the ramps in haste. A cold,
fatalistic calm settled over the master
engineer. For the moment he forgot
the pain of a crippled body, nor heard
the sibilant screams of the speeding
transport.
“Ready, sir.” It was Mechanic Hals
whose voice broke into Wiljon >Kar’s
frantic calculations. Behind the big
mechanic stood the tall, lean Twombley.
At that moment a signal gong from
the plot deck aroused Wiljon Kar to
action. Hands steadied upon anchor
guides. A rumbling quivered over the
dome as a snakelike coil of steel shot
from the W62. Eyes straining through
bare slits, Wiljon Kar guided the blasts,
saw that the anchor caps fastened upon
the silver plates of M31.
“Boarding her ?” Hals shouted.
Upon the engineer’s commanding nod
both mechanics squeezed through the
port, grasped the anchor chain. The
sput of a flame gun sent dangling bodies
across the intervening void.
Mardico staggered into the dome bear-
ing the inert, though completely suited
body of Prock.
“Glory to Pluto!” Mardico sputtered.
“And do we scorn the devil to his horny
face by ship jumping whilst the very
fires of the sun singe our hides! I
“Hush — or you’ll burn while your
tongue’s still flapping. You can swing
it with Prock.”
“And leave you here? ’Tis not the
way I see it, Wiljon Kar.”
Though he did not reply in words and
the glare of the sun hid the expression
in his face, Mardico sensed the dynamic
anger of his commander. Swiftly the
old guardsman made for the port.
Shifting Prock’s body so that the trip
might be executed with a minimum of
danger, Mardico grasped one hand to
the chain, firing his flame gun from the
hand which held the inert body.
WILJON KAR had permitted him-
self a parting glance toward the floating
bodies. Lifting a hand in mute tribute
to their loyalty he turned grimly to the
almost superhuman task before him. A
mirthless smile was etched upon the
strong features as he lowered himself
from the dome to the ship’s ramp.
Dragging his useless legs painfully,
Wiljon Kar crawled frantically to the
plot deck.
The W62 seemed ghostly, a weirdly
lifeless craft. For a moment he was
acutely conscious of being alone. Mem-
ories came of old Mardico’s jovial rum-
bles, of the blind loyalty of Twombley
and Hals, of the self-effacing greatness
of the elderly Prock. Noble men were
122
ASTOUNDING STORIES
they, knowing nothing of fear, laughing
in the face of impossibilities, secure in
their faith that he, Wiljon Kar, would
somehow determine upon the ' right
orders that the W62 might again tri-
umph against the incalculable strength
and vastness of the universe.
And he must figure rightly once more.
Fervently he invoked strength and wis-
dom. He had to be right — this last
time. Crawling painfully up into the
pilot seat Wiljon Kar grasped at the
ship’s controls.
A faint murmur of power throbbed
hopefully at his touch. With expert
precision he shunted the remaining
energy of the transport toward the ring
of secondary torps, used principally in
steering. His hand resting tremblingly
upon the power lever, Wiljon Kar made
a slow, cautious recheck of the gauges,
braced himself, breathing deeply. It
would be a difficult maneuver and one
too reckless for ordinary cruising.
Ships had been known to explode when
subjected to even less strain.
Wiljon Kar’s hands played upon the
controls. From a single torp a stab of
energy drove the W62 headlong in the
direction of the mysterious pull. He
was conscious of strange tremors
throughout his body. Flight gauges
were suddenly useless. He was flying
forward at a velocity never before en-
dured by man. Nerves tingled in a
surge of wild joy. The grin deepened.
Death it must be — but death most
gloriously won.
Counting the minutes, Wiljon Kar
estimated that the W62 must be well
forward of the M31 and gaining with
fearful acceleration. Suddenly his eyes
sharpened to jnn-point keenness. He
seemed to stare at the steady move of
his own hand as he reached forward,
breathed deeply again, pressed the studs
of the secondary torps.
The crescendo of screeching, howling
sounds rose swiftly until human ears
refused to respond. Sweat beaded upon
the marble-white forehead. His. head
throbbed with a soundless agony. Every
nerve stiffened, trilled in fiery torture.
Speed — incredible motion! Wiljon Kar
marveled at the endurance of his own
body. A lesser man would have ceased
to know life before this. But somehow
he held on, no longer conscious of pain
nor capable of conceiving fear. This
was death — death prolonged in exquisite
agony — death whose glory was only
dreamable.
On and on, faster and faster. The
W62 was miles ahead of the M31 now.
The broken gauges mocked his anxious
survey. Nevertheless, he was' safe
enough in counting again. Every min-
ute stretched the gap between the two
ships. Wiljon Kar lay back in the seat,
closed his eyes, waited for death.
A STRANGE, hoarse muttering
stabbed the calmness of his unreal re-
laxation. Wiljon Kar leaned forward,
laughed softly. He’d been dreaming,
of course. His tortured mind must be
confusing memory with present-sense
receptivity. But the rumbling tone had
sounded as if old Mardico were beside
him. He forced himself to lay back.
He couldn’t give up now. There was
still one more task to perform. He
must live long enough to fulfill this
mission.
“Wiljon Kar — ’tis to hell we’ve come.
Wiljon Kar — what’s happened?”
The engineer spun about, a cry of
incredulity escaping the firmly drawn
lips.
“Mardico! You — you here?”
Staggering slowly, his thick body
seeming scarcely able to maneuver
against the awful velocity, the old
guardsman groped his way across the
plot deck.
“Wiljon Kar,” old Mardico said.
“Glory to Pluto! Never have I seen
such craziness — nor be I drunk. So
sober am I that scarcely do I recognize
the likes of me. I say what’s up?”
THE W62’S LAST FLIGHT
123
Wiljon Kar choked out the words:
“Why are you here? I ordered ”
Mardico waved him to silence. “I
took him — over. Prock’s on the M31 —
with Hals and Twombley. I had to
come back — to get Boseo.”
A queer pain twisted in his throat.
Wiljon Kar met the steady gaze from
the old guardsman’s steel-gray eyes.
His lips moved to shape the word he
could not utter: “Liar.” Mardico had
not deceived him. Impulsively the two
gripped hands.
“I figured as how — as how you might
be needing me— somehow or other,” the
whispered words scarcely carried above
the shrieking din.
Wiljon Kar spun about in the seat
quickly, lest the tears in his eyes be
seen. For a moment his hands quivered
above the controls. A new light gleamed
from his eyes now. Mardico’s insane
loyalty seemed to have charged the en-
gineer with renewed energy.
“The pull’s holding evenly now.”
Wiljon Kar spoke that the sound of his
own voice might hold his mind in proper
balance. “Velocity is constant. We can
chance it for another quarter hour — if
the break doesn’t come before that.
We’ll have to ” His voice droned
into tight-lipped silence as the calcula-
tions were rechecked. Suddenly he
turned sharply.
“Ready, Mardico — throw on your
space cap and close the light filter. Then
heave the reflector plate cover. Hold it
open till I order it shut again. All set?
Open up!”
Vivid lashes of merciless white light
poured from the reflector until every
line of the plot deck was lost in the
furious glare. Using a triple shield,
Wiljon Kar studied the image whose
fiery intensity would not be constrained
to the limits of the reflector plate. They
were staring at the sun toward which
the W62 was plunging.
Wiljon Kar gasped in sheer amaze-
ment. “I see it ! I see it now,” he cried.
“We’ve nosed into it !”
Against the pulsating background of
the sun the mysterious ball of almost
invisible energy rotated as a planet spins
in its orbital journey. The engineer’s
hands shook as he adjusted the reflector
plate so that the point of examination
was gradually shifted completely around
the W62.
“We’re in the very center of it. If
Prock were only here But it is
matter. We’re at the very core of a
whirling globe of matter.”
Skillfully, the thrill of discovery burn-
ing through his blood stream, Wiljon
Kar adjusted the Element H spectro-
scope.
“A world it is,” old Mardico breathed
awedly against the engineer’s ear.
“Look at the bands — carbon a little,
nitrogen, helium — colossus — ’tis mostly
all helium — and we’re inside of it.”
“Right,” Wiljon Kar’s voice rose in
excitement. “This is — or was once — a
small satellite — perhaps of Planet Mer-
cury. But with its orbit so near the sun
its elements have broken down into a
pure gaseous state — and its resultant ex-
cess of energy charges account for this
incredible power to clutch an all-metal
space ship.
“It’s more vast than I’d imagined —
small wonder the M31 was pulled away.
The transport must have come into the
sphere of influence by chance, as the
strange satellite tore along its eccentric
orbit. Now I remember Con-
ningsby once advanced a theory that
there was a satellite of Mercury which
could not be observed due to the intense
brightness of the sun. And we’ve found
it! We’ve found Conningsby’s satel-
lite !”
Mardico’s wheezing gasps cut sharply.
Almost feebly the old guardsman
clutched at the excited engineer’s arm.
“But so, Wiljon Kar — now that we’ve
found it what — what t’hell are we gonna
do with it ? We’re falling ”
124
ASTOUNDING STORIES
Wiljon Kax leaned back, his lanky
frame shaking with hysterical laughter.
“That’s it — we’re not falling. Don’t
you see it, Mardico? We’re riding with
the satellite — inside of it. We’re a part
of it. We can’t fall into the sun because
the satellite itself will carry us beyond
as it hurls along its crazed orbit. We’ll
just stay here and ”
“And get turned into a gas? No, by
glory, ’tis not the way of it! Wiljon
Kar — wait — let me shut off the danged
reflector. The heat’s got you.”
WITHOUT WAITING the engi-
neer’s orders Mardico clamped the cover
back upon the reflector plate. His huge
body bustled with feverish haste. He
hastened to the compartment at the rear
of the room, securing two stone
tankards.
“Drink,” Mardico ordered. “Get
your brain in proper order. Drink, I
say.”
Wiljon Kar lowered the tankard with
a groan. The bitter roulek burned his
mouth. Nevertheless, the lines of his
face hardened into ridges of determina-
tion.
“The other ship — the M31,” he mut-
tered. “Our chance to save it — Mar-
dico, listen — to the power deck. Align
the fuel flow, cut off feeder tubes to all
save rear- and lunar-deck torps — quick.”
Old Mardico grinned and brushed the
roulek-moistened bristles about his
mouth. Sweat poured down his face.
His breath was coming in short, painful
gasps. But he responded with a reckless
salute.
The churning surge of tortured mat-
ter reverberated with barragelike thun-
der, hammered nerves into wire-stiff
tautness. Wiljon Kar set the controls.
Minutes dragged with agony. At sound
of the gong he tensed, grasped power-
and-direction levers, threw the instru-
ments into full power.
The W62 seemed to spin till vision
was lost in the cruel twist of kaleido-
scopic horror. Only the sense of pain
remained. Jets of furious flame burst
from the W62’s torps, twisting the ship
into a new angle. For a moment they
seemed suspended in space. Time,
energy, matter were meaningless fig-
ments of fiction to harried brains.
Mechanically, Wiljon Kar threw all his
remaining strength upon the main-torp
lever.
With a wrench which seemed to pull
the very life from his body he felt the
W62 tear itself free of the clutching
force. The torps blasts held, yet the
W62 seemed to pull away but scant
inches.
He was conscious of Mardico’s return
to the plot deck. Still holding the main
discharge lever at full power, Wiljon
Kar screamed frantic orders.
“Mardico — the arc-finder director —
release to complete discharge — hurry.”
Clumsily, his body swaying drunkenly
from the combined heat and strain of
the ship, Mardico swayed toward the
instrument.
“Space suit in order!” Wiljon Kax
cried out fiercely. “Now — ready — cut
it loose!”
In the terrific blast which followed,
the W62 seemed the very stuff of a
holocaust. Senses were tortured to in-
describable endurance of blinding light
and roll upon roll of sound. Flashing
spears of exquisite pain stabbed through
every nerve. For moments, or hours,
or years it seemed, agonized conscious-
ness shot with the speed of light across
the immeasurable chaos of an exploding
universe.
“Mardico!” Wiljon Kar sensed his
awkward stumble toward the old guards-
man. Before his horrified gaze the walls
of the plot deck cracked, crumbled, ex-
panded. Waves of exploding energy
hurled outward to be lost in the stately
roll of alternating light and frigid
blackness.
Wiljon Kar was conscious now of his
hold upon Mardico’s body. Felt the
THE W62’S LAST FLIGHT
125
impact of the other’s gaze of horror as
their eyes met. Old Mardico was reach-
ing toward him, his lips moving in
spasmodic jerks as he sought to voice
a sound.
THEY WERE hurtling through
space. Blackness engulfed them. Now
the alternating bands of light and dark-
ness became recognizable. They were
spinning even as their bodies shot for-
ward. The light was the glare of the
distant sun as they spun in the flight ;
the darkness was the blackness of space.
But they were no longer in the W62.
Wiljon Kar struggled to align his
thoughts. Why were they here ? What
had happened?
Now he saw it. The W62 had ex-
ploded with that last and greatest strain.
They had been blasted from the ripping
shell of matter and driving energy.
Old Mardico’s voice sounded through
the flurry of their speeding journey.
“Wiljon Kar — are you alive? Look
— off that way — earthward — when we’re
turned about again Do you see it ?
The M31 — and she’s maneuvering!
She’s free! Do you see it?”
Wiljon Kar’s lips tightened in a
mirthless grin. Mardico was right. He
could catch a glimpse of it as they spun
about. The M31 was angling now. It
would be a matter of an hour or so until
the anchor chains would shoot out. The
thought was pleasant. They’d be back
on Mars. It would be nightfall at North
Cap. Wiljon Kar laughed softly.
“I say,” Mardico said, “laughing
again? But no matter. ’Tis the roulek
as tickles your heart this time and not
sun madness.”
“No — I was just thinking — about
what you came back for. You forgot
all about Bosco.”
Mardico snorted into the radio phone.
“Glory and you're misjudging me, sir,
for Bosco, bless her prickly hide, is safe
with Prock on the M31 all the time.
But watch it — she’s nearin’ — there comes
the anchor chain. Holy comets ! Whata
day — whata day.”
Don’t Miss:
The Shadow Out
of Time
by H. P. Lovecraft
It is one of the rare science-fiction stories by one of the
favorite writers in the field.
IN THE JUNE ISSUE OF ASTOUNDING.
Spawn
of
Eternal
Thought
IX.
D ORA awoke with a start. She
sensed that something had
awakened her. Not the stroke
of the clock, nor any interior noise. It
had been something else. Staring
around, everything seemed normal. Her
husband lay peacefully asleep in the
other bunk. But something had
She shrugged and stepped to the win-
dow, graceful as a fairy, in Iapetus’
puny gravity. Low on the horizon Sat-
urn and his shimmering halo were slowly
ascending, for this satellite had a period
of rotation. Dora drank in the beauty
of the scene. Long, silvered shafts of
xanthic light crawled over the barren
topography outside the ship. Even that
desolate landscape was beautiful under
the magic touch of an alien pseudosun.
Near by, towering a hundred feet,
were the beetling cliffs under which
Renolf had parked the Comet, as a
measure of protection against meteors.
Yet Dora saw that the repulsor screen’s
recorder showed a terrific discharge. A
huge meteor had plunged at the ship.
The valiant, atomic-powered screen had
shunted it aside.
Suddenly the girl gasped, as her eyes
Concluding a two-
part story of
super-space
by
Eando Binder
turned to the other side of the cabin.
From out that port she saw a confused
mass of crystalline matter blocking the
light. Frightened, she awoke Renolf.
The latter blinked his eyes and then
ran to the forward compartment. When
he returned, he was grinning.
“Nothing serious, honey. Just a
mere matter of maybe a thousand tons
of rock falling on the ship! Saw the
jagged missing patch in the cliff’s face
from the front nose port. Look at that
gauge, will you? Ten thousand milli-
ergs of repulsion ! Why that must have
burned up a full ounce of sand fuel !
Enough to feed the engines from here
to Halifax. Such expense!”
Dora slapped him playfully. “Silly!
But really, Vince, for a minute, when I
saw that mess out there by the window,
I didn’t know what to think.”
“A mere dust heap to our repulsion
screen,” deprecated Vincent. “It’s de-
signed to turn away instantaneously a
meteor outweighing the Comet a thou-
sand times at one tenth the speed of
light.”
“What made the cliff fall anyway?”
“A meteor, of course.” Vincent
turned to look again at the jumbled
debris beyond the side port. For a
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Sixty seconds to go! Thereafter the two humans reacted as if
the shiftings of needles were their own pulse beats.
128
ASTOUNDING STORIES
long moment he stared — and wondered.
For what he had neglected to tell Dora
was that a meteor, in plunging into the
hard, crystalline mass of the cliff, would
have sprayed it in a molten form far
and wide.
Something else had caused that col-
lapse of rigid rock. Either a fault in
its grain, or — the menace ! An odd
thought. An impossible thought. Yet
the staring man could not rid himself
of it. There had grown up in him, in
these past few weeks, a feeling that
they were being watched. That the
course of the Comet had been followed
by other-worldly eyes. At times Renolf,
with the headband on, had seemed to feel
a prying finger in his mind. As though
the menace, whatever and wherever it
was, were tabulating, recording, his in-
nermost thoughts. It had been an eerie
feeling.
And now this sudden collapse of a
cliff that had stood for ages Was
it a warning?
FOR AN HOUR they were busy
and happy with the bustling of daily
ablutions and a breakfast. Vincent’s
absences as the super-Renolf were really
a tonic to their companionship. It made
them more appreciative of each other.
Finally the young husband reached for
the headband with a sigh. He was
sorry to part company with his wife,
yet the urge of the super-Renolf was
not to be denied.
“We’ve checked off the list the first
three of our scheduled stops,” said
Renolf as he skimmed the Comet away
from little Iapetus. “And they are the
outermost ports of call in the solar sys-
tem, from a biological viewpoint. I
had not originally planned it, but out
of curiosity I wish to touch upon Saturn
itself, and see what there is to see.”
There proved to be little to see in
the blinding haze of Saturn’s thick and
writhing atmosphere. Where the at-
mosphere ended, and the “ground” be-
gan was a moot question, as the giant
planet was little more than semiviscous
liquid. And Renolf did not care to stay
long when he saw his companion
flushed and miserable from the great
heat which worked through the insulated
hull.
But before they left, they came upon
an “island” of solidified material on the
boiling seas — yet in area it was prob-
ably more in aggregate than the total
land surface of Earth! In the central
portion of this land mass they were
amazed to find a prolific plant and ani-
mal life. It was the Carboniferous Age
of Earth brought back to life! They
stayed only long enough to observe a
few dozen scaled beasts haunting the
tremendous fern forests.
“Behold!” said Renolf. “A life at
its near beginning! From those mon-
sters will one day come a race of think-
ing beings. It is one of Nature’s labo-
ratories.”
Renolf consulted his complicated
space charts and set a course. “Now
for Jupiter and his moons. Fortunately,
that planet is at present on the same
sun side as Saturn. Saves us consider-
able time.”
Yet it took the silvery Comet three
weeks to leap the enormous gap between
Saturn and Jupiter. Now and then the
repulsor dials showed a sudden dis-
charge. Meteors, stones of space,
ricocheting off harmlessly. The terrific
momentum loosed at such semicollisions
— enough to knock the Comet degrees
off its course — was almost wholly buff-
ered. Inside they felt but the faintest
of jars. Dora vaguely understood that
it was scientific magic that could so
ease the otherwise great shock — Renolf’s
scientific magic.
TIME did not drag. Time only
drags when there is boredom. There
could be no boredom in space. Not
when each glance at its manifold mys-
AST— 8
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
129
teries occasions a limitless train of won-
dering thought.
The giant among planets, with its
great “red eye” gleaming at them cryp-
tically, Jupiter dissolved out of the void
rapidly. Renolf laid a course imme-
diately for Europa, fourth largest of its
nine moons.
Smaller than Earth’s Moon, it proved
to have an atmosphere as tenuous as
Titan’s had been. Strangely, however,
the oxygen content was low. So low
that even in its younger days it might
have been unable to support life. It had
a queer topography, too — displaying
remnants of mountain chains that must
once have been very great. And a dull,
rusty coloring lay over the whole satel-
lite. As though some cosmic giant had
sprinkled red pepper over it, preparatory
to eating it whole.
Signs of former civilization were
rare. The two Earthlings sensed that
something on this small world had pre-
vented its full development as an abode
of life. Age-old ruins gave the im-
pression of a culture that had never got-
ten much above what Earth had even
then, in her short life.
“Another mystery here,” reflected
Renolf. “A civilization throttled at
birth, so to speak. Something brought
about its doom long before the hand of
Time had chilled their planet.” He
pursed his lips. “One thing, though —
Io, the next nearest moon, is close in-
deed. The answer might lie there.
When rival civilizations lie only 150,000
miles apart ”
And the answer did lie on Io. An
answer more lucid than Renolf could
have dared to hope. Fed throughout
the ages by Jupiter’s life-giving rays,
and very close to it, Io had evidently en-
joyed a long period of propitious life.
Its topography, too, was jumbled,
jagged. From a distance its surface
looked like the pitted surface of Earth’s
Moon. Yet it must have sheltered a
numerous race, for its ocean beds were
AST— 9
not extensive, and around them were
immense areas of level land. In the
ages gone they had been fertile farm
lands.
Coming upon their first relic of
former civilization, Dora gasped in-
credulously. Even Renolf jerked his
eyes wide. If the transparent domes of
Titan and Rhea had been gigantic, these
man-made dwellings on Io were super-
colossal. For a hundred miles in either
direction squatted an unbelievable mass
of solid structure. In height it could
have been no less than a mile.
Dora blinked her eyes in disbelief.
A solid building doubtless capable of
holding all of Earth’s population at
once! At widely separated intervals on
the perfectly level roof were smaller
square buildings, like chimneys of an
apartment house.
For a moment the girl thought she
saw smoke coming from them. Then
the incongruousness of the thought
shook her with silent laughter. For,
obviously, the structure was no more
than an ancient relic. A forgotten tomb,
like the hemispheres of Titan had been.
Meteors had crashed through the roof
in countless numbers, and when Renolf
brought the ship lower, it looked like
a sieve.
Renolf nodded. “Another example
of rational life’s tendency to become in-
dependent of Nature. In this sort of
community house, a world in itself, the
intelligence of Io lived on after their
world had refused to nourish them fur-
ther. What a great science this repre-
sents !”
AT the first opportunity, of course,
Renolf slid the Comet through a meteor-
made rent in the roof, for a glance at
the interior. To their surprise, there
was light below. They looked up star-
tled to see the heavens as though noth-
ing were between them. “What a great
science indeed,” breathed Renolf.
“When it could produce a substance
130
ASTOUNDING STORIES
transmitting light and radiation only
one way ! Here they lived as though
out under the stars. Yet protected from
the cold and airlessness that came over
their dying planet.”
‘‘But why,” asked Dora, “should such
a tricky one-way glass be used? Why
not the transparent domes of Titan?”
Renolf shrugged. “I cannot fathom
their every secret. Perhaps they had
enemies whose prying vision must be
shielded off. More likely something we
cannot understand.”
Renolf dropped the Comet through
the great hole torn out by the meteor.
On all sides they saw a maze of cham-
bers. Their contents, not made of the
resistant stuff of the walls, were in every
stage of ruin. It was mostly dust. The
huge structure was a honeycomb plun-
dered by time of its formerly precious
contents. A husk, like a petrified
sponge.
Then they came upon large lateral
tunnels in the depths of the building.
Probably the means of transport from
one part of the unit city to another, they
stretched endlessly. With the perfect
transparentness of the structure’s skel-
eton, allowing the somber light of over-
head Jupiter through, Renolf guided the
ship along one tunnel. He was careful,
not knowing what lay ahead.
Chilled by some somber thought, Dora
suddenly noticed the ship had come to a
halt. She looked around. Renolf was
staring out of his side port eagerly.
Dora went to his side. Then she saw
too what had disturbed even the emo-
tionless super-Renolf.
The tunnel, like an artery to a great
heart, had opened abruptly into a Gar-
gantuan-cleared space. It was like the
courtyard of a castle. In the empti-
ness that reared a mile upward to the
very roof was a slender column of stone.
But slender only in comparison to its
height. By Earthly measurements it
would be capable — were it hollow — of
holding four Empire State buildings,
one on top of the other.
“What is it?” asked the girl involun-
tarily.
“A glorified totem pole,” answered
Renolf quickly. “See? — it is carved and
arabesqued. And more” — he brought
the ship closer to it — “on it is engraved
a form of writing! Lord, if I could
only decipher it ! Perhaps the whole
history and science of this race are there
in letter forms!”
It was possible at that, for the writ-
ing was small. The indelible records
of a dead race, inscribed on imperish-
able material ! The alien words seemed
to spiral around the column. One could
then start at the top, and given enough
time, read to the bottom, without hav-
ing to turn a page or ransack libraries.
Imbued with a desire to test his
theory, Renolf raised the ship in the
open space around the pillar. Just be-
low the roof, it ended in an elaborately
carved stoa. The figures of the group
were strange and shocking to Earthly
eyes, resembling no creature of Earth.
But Renolf was more interested in their
records than their physical form. He
came upon the beginning of the writing.
THEN an exclamation was wrung
from his lips. He brought the Comet
closer, not a yard from the column’s
surface. “Look! This is not writing,
as the lines below are. This is a form
of hieroglyphics — ideographs — like the
Egyptians used!
“It is a record made for alien eyes
to see and understand. That must be
the sun symbol — a small circle and radi-
ating lines. There’s Jupiter — circle with
wavy lines and an elliptical red spot.
A space ship — see that? — a windowed
globe with dots around it. Why, with
a little concentration, I should be able
to get the drift of the meaning behind
those symbols!”
And the upshot of this discovery was
that the Cornet hovered around the in-
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
131
scribed column for two weeks. Up-
held by its diamagnetic auxiliary engine,
it crawled beetlelike around and around
in a slow spiral. Dora, with some hesi-
tation, granted the super-Renolf an ex-
tension of time— twelve hours out of a
day instead of only eight. She also
volunteered to help. At Renolf’s dicta-
tion, she took down a bulky mass of
inarticulate notes, as he translated tire-
lessly from the cryptograms.
It was hard work, and no normal
man could have gotten anything from
it. The super-Renolf, however, one
day summarized what the record
told.
“The details are too obscure to re-
peat. In the main I have learned this :
Io and Europa grew up together as
abodes of intelligent life. For ages
each lived its own life. Then tele-
scopes made them aware of one an-
other’s existence. Much later, when
their science had grown to great
heights, space travel between them be-
came possible.
“Europa, somewhat older in civili-
zation, waged a terrific havoc on Io,
nearly decimating its races. Satisfied,
they returned and forgot their former
enemy. Enmity had grown up between
them for reasons I could not quite
grasp. But Io builded anew, in secrecy.
“What was perhaps ages later, she
arose in a mighty wrath and wreaked
vengeance on Europa. But a terrible
vengeance it was ! A horrible chemical
was dumped wholesale in the other
satellite’s atmosphere — a chemical that
in a few short years took most of the
oxygen from her atmosphere!”
Renolf shuddered a bit in the telling.
“That accounts, you see, for the strange
lack of oxygen in Europa’s atmosphere.
That the chemical had in it iron in
some form or other is obvious, because
as we saw, that poor doomed planet is
at present dusted with red rust. That
is the saga of life when these small
bodies were young and propitious.
“The record goes on to tell of Io’s
gradual freezing over, and their suc-
cessful stand against oblivion. Notice
— their successful stand. The record
ends, saying that, through with the
struggles of youth, their race was en-
trenched, agelessly, against destruction.”
Renolf ended in a low mutter:
“Again that mystery of what happens
to great civilizations. They were in-
vincible against Nature, and now — they
are gone!”
“Isn’t that record a clue?” spoke up
Dora. “As Io destroyed Europa, per-
haps Ganymede or Callisto destroyed
Io!”
“You haven’t the time sense,” re-
turned Renolf disparagingly. “Gany-
mede and Callisto, being much larger,
cooled down much later. Civilization
on them did not reach such a peak till
long after the people of Io had become
independent of Nature. And, not fear-
ing such a formidable enemy, what
could a struggling young civilization in-
spire in the way of threat? The rec-
ord, by the way, mentions that the two
larger satellites had been visited in
space ships. The loans found only bar-
baric races, with no conception of life,
on other worlds.
“No, the loans, living in this and per-
haps similar unit cities, could fear no
mortal enemy. Electronic screens,
which they must have had to repel me-
teors, are proof against man-made
weapons. Any possible warfare de-
stroying these people should at the same
time have razed this city to the ground
anyway.
“I wish I could decipher the written
records of that column. There surely
would be important clues. But that
would be impossible. There is no key
to the script. I even doubt a key could
be devised. For what basis of com-
parison could link their thought with
ours, living as we did, separate lives
on separate worlds?"
132
ASTOUNDING STORIES
RENOLF jabbed viciously at the
controls. He muttered added words
that Dora could barely catch: “Maybe
after all it is impossible to fathom such
a great mystery — the mystery of the
dooms to the solar system's various
civilizations.”
During his free periods, Vincent
would talk over excitedly with Dora
what things they had observed. The
shadow of the superman had again
fallen over him heavily. Perhaps it
would be so the rest of his life. Dora
quailed at the thought. Married to a
man whom she loved eternally, but who
was dominated by an other self. All
his life Vincent would be thus imposed
upon. The superman would step from
one great project to another. First it
had been reform of Earth. Now it was
prying into the solar system’s secrets.
What would it be next?
But something goaded the super-
Renolf more, secretly, than his lust for
knowledge. It was the mystery of the
menace. That menace which had made
itself known to Dr. Hartwell. Had
whispered to him in unintelligible tones
of threat. Had perhaps caused his
death !
This was another of those inexplica-
ble intuitions that had no shred of proof
behind them. Like the collapse of the
cliff on Iapetus. Somehow it seemed
there might be a whole chain of events
connected to the presence of a menace
in the solar system. Renolf felt — and
cursed his insufficiency, superman
though he was — that he was missing a
vital link in that chain. Where — where
could he find it?
X.
CALLISTO, a satellite of Jupiter’s
as large as Mercury, proved to have an
appreciable atmosphere, largely oxygen.
In the past it must have had an en-
velope of air comparable to Earth’s.
For the first time in their jaunt among
planet corpses, the travelers found the
ruins of underground habitations. The
Callistoans had evidently found it more
economical or less troublesome to bur-
row into rock and there take a stand
against oblivion. Perhaps they had
been mole creatures, always living in
the ground. The problem was unsolv-
able, for they had left no records, as
the loans had.
Meteors had again wrought a tre-
mendous havoc in the ages, as they
must on any world with a thin air blan-
ket to protect its face. They had laid
bare a complex system of honeycombed
labyrinths. Exploring down one me-
teor shaft, the Earthlings were as-
tounded at the endless ramifications
of its catacombs. It was like a multi-
ple beehive. A glorified termite hill.
The numbering system alone must have
been of a sort to stagger human under-
standing.
Imbedded in the solid rock, ribbed
with a metal that showed no appre-
ciable sign of corrosion, the strange
subterranean dwellings — there were
many over the planet — defied the in-
exorable hand of time. Yet they were
empty. Devoid of life. Devoid even
of signs of life. All the contents had
long since swirled to dust.
There were huge chambers at the bot-
tom, miles below. These might have
once throbbed and hummed to mighty
machines. Now there was but an even
layer of fine particles over the adamant
flooring. The cabin of the Comet again
became infused with a haunting sad-
ness. The million-fold sadness of a
globe trotter returning home to find
his abode a dilapidated ruin, tenantless.
“Another item in the great mystery,”
Renolf said as he headed the ship for
Ganymede. Ganymede, the giant
among satellites — so large that it could
have exchanged places with Mars with-
out seriously disturbing the balance of
the solar system.
There was something Earthlike about
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
133
it at first glance. A dead seed of the
void, true — but it subtly hinted that in
former glories it had been like green
Earth. Green oceans, luscious vegeta-
tion, snaking rivers, vast prairies — it
had had them in eons gone. And its
peoples had been startlingly Earthlike.
This they found out from the nu-
merous carved relief works in their an-
cient ruins. The ultimate in Gany-
median living quarters seemed to have
been strangely impermanent dwellings.
The ruins were ruins in every sense of
the word. Every wall, every partition,
every roof, was down. Flat and eroded
to crumbly sections that were vanish-
ing slowly, age by age. None of the
ruins was extensive, but their number
was legion. They had not congregated
as closely as had, for instance, the Cal-
listoans in their subsurface beehives.
FROM a number of related phenom-
ena, Renolf deduced that the civiliza-
tion of Ganymede had also reached that
peak where they had been independent
of Nature. One thing alone indicated
that they must have had a compar-
atively long-lived existence. Their bas-
reliefs had, among representations of
all the solar system’s various worlds,
carved pictures of Earth, showing
oceans and continents very like those
existing in the present.
“Ganymede,” elaborated Renolf,
“along with Mars, due to its size, had
a period of propitiousness to organic
life not far removed from our Earth-
Venus era. Perhaps only a few hun-
dred thousand years ago these people
thrived! Certainly the carving of
Earth, distorted though the land and
water areas are, shows they must have
observed our home planet not so long
ago. Long, indeed, after Earth’s crust
had cooled and taken on a semblance of
its present configujation.
“Their cities, so flimsy that to-
day they are dust, must have in their
age been protected by shields of force
alone. Not domes or roofs of time-
defying materials like on the other
worlds. So then they, too,” he con-
cluded in perplexed vexation, “reached
a deathless state. And they, too, like
the others, succumbed to oblivion at the
last. With a science grown greater
than their every living need — they died
away 1”
“Is it possible,” asked Dora, “that
there is some little thing without which
organic life cannot survive, and which
even science could not give them?”
“Nothing,” said Renolf with firm
conviction. “Why, even on .Earth to-
day, if mankind were suddenly forced
to live independently of Nature, it
could be done. Not with Earthly sci-
ence, no. But with the science I have
at my command, yes. Atomic power
solves the heat and light problem.
Voluntary transmutation would give
food and water from the very rock
atoms. Air to breathe, the biggest
problem of all — I could devise auto-
matic machinery for that, too.”
“But you are a superman,” reminded
Dora. “Perhaps your science is even
above ”
Renolf chuckled. “Unthinkable.
True, a composite of ten of Earth’s
most brilliant minds, I am a supermind.
But I cannot represent more than a
few thousand years of human evolu-
tion. These alien scientists — they could
have taught me many a trick, never
fear.”
“Then what answer is there?” asked
Dora in sudden vexation. “You claim
they must have had a superscience,
greater than yours. And yours, you
say, is adequate to make mankind su-
preme from Nature. Yet the fact re-
mains that these civilizations do vanish !”
But Dora had simply voiced the
enigma to which Renolf struggled to
find an answer. “We have yet Venus,
Mars, Mercury, and Earth’s Moon to
visit,” returned Renolf calmly. “Per-
- ... • • ' .••• fzr*r ■ ... - • •
ASTOUNDING STORIES
134
haps on one of them we will find an
answer.”
But Renolf neglected to tell her what
for some time had been in his mind —
that there was some connection between
these lost civilizations and the menace !
Despite his seeming calmness, he was
in a turmoil. Each time the dreaded
sibilance pounded at his brain — which
happened at periodic intervals — Renolf
sprang to special instruments and tried
to trace back the signal to its source.
Each time some inexplicable force
knocked the workings of his apparatus
awry. As though the menace knew
what was being done and resented be-
ing traced. No trick of Renolf’s
mighty science sufficed to change that
inevitable result. He spent long hours
in his small laboratory devising new
types of tracer cages to trap the incom-
ing radiation and orientate it in space.
It seemed unavailing labor.
VENUS being somewhat closer at
the time than Mars, Renolf took the
long jump from Jupiter to Earth’s sis-
ter planet.
It was no different than any other
part of their travels, except for one
thing. While passing the asteroid belt,
flying high above it to avoid collision
amid its crowded area, the Comet very
nearly blundered into a jet-black plan-
etoid. Only lightning action on the part
of Renolf had saved them from dis-
aster at their terrific pace.
Renolf insisted his instruments had
not been wrong — that the black plan-
etoid had come up to them out of its
prescribed orbit! Not an error in
astronautics, but a slip of the laws of
nature. That explanation was all he
could give Dora. Yet within himself
he was confronted with another ex-
planation no less fantastic. The menace
had moved again ! As though this were
some cosmic chess game in which
Renolf was not a player but a pawn!
Venus — ever clothed in cloudy veils.
What could lie beneath? Despite their
soul-awing trip out to distant Saturn
and Jupiter, Dora felt more interest in
Venus than any before. Those other
worlds had been dead. The well-known
evening star of Earth’s skies should be
alive.
And alive it proved to be. Under its
tepid, moisture-laden atmosphere thrived
an organic life more varied than
Earth’s. There were immense jungles,
turbulent oceans, sparkling blue lakes.
There were myriads of animals, birds,
insects. There was rain and thunder,
storms and lightning. And there were
living, intelligent creatures.
A civilization in the making. But
not yet as high as Earth’s. The coast-
ing space ship hovered over water-
drenched villages of thatch and wood.
Awed denizens of the primeval land-
scape stared aloft in fear. They were
repulsively amphibian in structure, half-
seal, half-beast. Yet they had large,
well-shaped craniums. And they had
weapons, clothing, household parapher-
nalia.
Renolf did not attempt to land any-
where and communicate with the in-
habitants. There could be no profit in
it. It could solve no part of the great
mystery. But he did — after carefully
analyzing the air — swing open the side
port. The two space travelers reveled
for a day in the breath of a rainy,
pungent atmosphere. Artificial air was
so stale in comparison. And with this
taste of things natural, Dora insisted
that they land somewhere and walk for
the first time in months on something
besides the Comet’s metal floors. Vin-
cent enjoyed the adventure as much as
she, although they were soaked to the
skin. Dora even wondered how fresh
meat would taste, but Renolf vetoed the
idea firmly.
“There is something about primitive
things,” said the girl, just before they
reluctantly reentered the ship, “that
warms one’s whole spirit. Now those
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
135
artificial civilizations — I wonder if those
people could have been happy. Every-
thing artificial. No fresh food, no ex-
hilarating breath of pine-scented air, no
freedom to roam — I wonder.”
Vincent agreed with her, but Renolf
did not — later. “Mere animal happi-
ness. A joy of living that is fragile
and unlasting. Rational life grows to
a point where happiness lies in the mind.
Those artificial civilizations had men-
tal happiness inconceivable to persons
of this sort of world. Your scientist of
Earth — he knows of that. I have felt
it time and again. It is not lasting, but
then no joy is. Your father — he knew
a moment of divine ecstasy : When he
saw me, a superman of his creation, sit
up with a new knowledge in my eyes.”
“A divine joy,” murmured the girl
sorrowfully, “that brought him to his
death !”
“He paid the price gladly,” said
Renolf calmly. And for a moment Dora
hated him — the super-Renolf — for the
words. Then, realizing it was woman’s
weakness, she stilled her anger. After
all, it was atavistic instinct to grudge
mental attainment. An atavistic in-
stinct only too rampant on Earth. Her
father had, after all, done a great thing.
Had shaped a superman from crude hu-
man clay. And in the doing he had
been supremely happy — that Dora knew.
They left the steaming hothouse that
was Venus.
DESPITE Renolf’s misgivings — for
the chances were even either way —
Mercury proved to have signs of former
civilization. A civilization comparable
to any of the others. But only on the
night side. The other side, always fac-
ing the Sun, was an inferno of blinding
radiance and smothering heat. Almost
from the first, apparently, the people
had taken measures to protect their race
from oblivion. They had burrowed into
the sides of stupendous mountains.
Rock-ribbed and beamed with enor-
mously thick metal pillars, their cave-
like cities had withstood the pounding
and wearing of eons. Somber in eternal
starlight, the night side of Mercury had
once teemed with a great civilization.
The Earthlings gazed with awe upon
the ramifications of one city whose
heart was revealed through a long-past
catastrophe which had shorn away the
entire side of the mountain site. The
bewildering maze of corridors and con-
duits, bored through the mountain in
hundreds of cross rows, like a tree stump
invaded by burrowing insects.
Outjutting from the intact cliff faces
were great flat platforms. Landings for
air craft. Or if not air craft, then space
craft. The apexes of the mountain were
adorned with hemispherical, adamant
domes, as though they had been crowned
king.
“An astronomical station,” remarked
Renolf, sending the Comet close. “In
a way, Mercury is ideal for stellar ob-
servation. It being closest to the Sun.
from it would be seen all the planets
at full and at their nearest. The Mer-
curians must have been eager astrono-
mers, must have gazed wonderingly at
the sister planets from the first.
“What with the eternal night, a thin
atmosphere, and perfect oppositions,
they were perhaps the first of intelligent
life in the solar system to conjecture as
to other civilizations. And if those big
landings are of a late period — when air
was unnavigable — then they must have
had interplanetary commerce. And as
they were practically contemporary with
Jupiter’s two largest moons, those three
worlds may have for centuries ex-
changed mutually beneficial products,
inventions, and knowledge.”
Renolf sighed then. “But as with the
subterranean beehive dwellings of Cal-
listo, and the surface web works of
Ganymede, so with these supermodern
caves — dead! Void of life. Dusted
with the particles of long-decayed or-
ganic bodies.”
136
ASTOUNDING STORIES
And now even Dora faintly wondered
at the age-old significance of civiliza-
tions that the worms had left. Having
looked upon seven planetary tombs, she,
too, found reason to wonder why they
had all given up the ghost. In their
long trips from body to body, Renolf
had itemized for her the duration scale
of the solar system. Had inculcated pa-
tiently the time sense.
Dora was now able to reckon with
eons and millenniums as though they
were days of the week. And, knowing
that the infinitely slow progress of or-
ganic evolution took something like a
half billion years to result in human-
like intelligence, Dora was able to ap-
preciate the mystery of civilized life dy-
ing away in less than half that time.
The earliest civilization, probably that
of little, quickly cooling Rhea of Sat-
urn, expounded Renolf, could not have
been further removed in time than a
paltry ten million years.
“Really,” Renolf had elaborated, “the
length of time needed for evolution to
progress from a cell spark to a thinking
being is far greater than the difference
between the crust formations of the
various planets and satellites. In fact,
all organic life in the solar system is
contemporary.
“But Rhea and Europa preceded Io,
Titan, and Earth’s Moon by some two
to three million years, in culminating
in intelligence. They, in turn, preceded
Callisto and Mercury by a few million
years. They, in their turn, were some
million years ahead of Ganymede and
Mars. These last two were that much
ahead of Earth and Venus. And we
afe some few million years ahead of
Saturn and Jupiter. But, of course, on
their somewhat steamy island crusts at
present, as we saw on Saturn, are species
of animal life that will eventually evolve
rational creatures. In brief, with a
comprehensive time sense, one expects
each civilization to endure for those few
million years separating them. Why, in
the name of reason, should they not?”
RENOLF speared the Comet close
to Mars. He was both desperate and
eager. This planet had been the last,
perhaps, to develop intelligence in the
cosmic time scale. Then, too, Mars had
always been the apple of Earth’s imag-
inative eye. From the time of Kepler
on, human minds — and great ones — had
gazed on the garnet planet, and won-
dered. The mystery of its canals was
perhaps the oldest of astronomy’s many
unanswered queries.
“I don’t know why,” said Dora, “but
I feel more excited about this than any
of the others. Maybe there’s even —
even people here. Living people, I
mean !”
“There should be,” answered Renolf.
“The Neolithic Age of this planet could
not have been remoter than two million
years. The race should have survived
that tiny interval, considering the half
billion or so years that organic life sur-
vived before that.”
But
That “but” came true. It hung un-
voiced in the cabin of the Comet as
Renolf plunged the ship downward with
belching fore jets. Surprisingly, the
cabin had become warm. Renolf had
had to use a dozen blasts of -deceleration
to check speed. Mars had still an ap-
preciable atmosphere. Then the hull
had cooled — and the cabin — and Renolf
had changed to diamagnetic control. Be-
low was desolation, barrenness, desert
waste. Sad and lonely. A soil that had
once teemed with myriads of germ life,
now glinted sterile in a small sun’s gen-
tle glare.
But the Earthlings were not con-
cerned over this. Rational life, if there
were any, would not be a part of the
desolation. Intelligence had risen above
planetary death on those other worlds.
So it must be on Mars.
Then Dora pointed, trembling uncon-
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
137
trollably. Just peeping over the clear-
cut horizon was a man-made something.
The Comet sped toward it like a blood-
hound on a fresh spoor. Before arriv-
ing, they could see that it was some
sort of city. It was at the intersection
of two unending lines of white. At the
crossroads of two canals. A city of
slim spires upreared in countless con-
fusion, like a bunch of saw grass. Many
of the spires were broken short. For
a moment, from the distance, it looked
like a comb with many teeth out.
Then the “but” fulfilled itself.
Hovering a hundred feet above the tall-
est towers, they saw it to be a city of
ghosts. Unless even they had left.
Over it was a half-egg-shaped trans-
parent dome, like the domes of Titan.
Dead and lifeless. A man-shaped husk.
An unwitting tombstone for the race
that had once inhabited it, made it ring
with the boisterous noises of warm life.
A bleached skull on the desert, me-
teor-torn and lichen-rotted, it seemed
to grin its ghastly oblivion to the life
that had once been its soul. A corpse,
congealed in a frozen semivacuum, that
had never been given a decent burial.
Repulsive in Its ancient decay, fascinat-
ing in its suggestion of former glory.
And the canals — they were incredible
waterways in truth, bridged over with
a continuous transparent sheath, like the
city itself. The Earthlings followed
along one of them and at every intersec-
tion was a similar city — all lifeless.
“THIS Martian civilization was
unique,” said Renolf, after they had
spent a day wandering over the planet.
“They had a great number of those
spired cities, all interconnected by wa-
terways, and everything inclosed in the
air-tight dome material.”
“But why would they need water-
ways?” queried Dora. “Surely they
could have used some means of trans-
portation less primitive.”
“Transportation?” Renolf smiled.
“What do self-contained, unit dwellings
need with transportation ! They made
everything from the desert molecules.
No, the canals had another purpose.
Perhaps they were scenic avenues, like
those of Venice or Holland, down which
the Martians drifted in boats, in peace-
ful idleness. With the ultra-scientific
machinery to take care of their physical
necessities, they must have had much
time on their hands. Perhaps they had
regatta, water carnivals, parades, and
races along the thousands of miles of
these artificial rivers.”
Renolf maneuvered the Comet high
above the ground. The canals dwindled
to a network of fine-spun lines. “These
artificial waterways have been seen in
Earthly telescopes for some time, but
so faintly that there was always con-
troversy about it. Perhaps the main
reason they were discredited was be-
cause the human mind of Earth is so
unwilling to believe in extra-Terrestrial
life. What a story we will have to tell
when we get back ! I think I shall pub-
lish a book on what we have seen, just
for the one reason. Just to see what
a shock it will be to our little hide-bound
world!”
With quick movements, Renolf sent
the Comet flaming away from Mars.
“Our next and last stop will be the
Moon — our own Moon. On that body
we may expect to find a dead civiliza-
tion dating from the time of Io and
Titan. I am, of course, past hoping
that there could either be a living race
there, or a clue to the doom that wipes
out all civilizations.”
Then, it being time, he removed his
headband. “In a way,” he said, “I’m
sort of glad the trip is nearly over.
It’s been no less than four months that
we’ve been in space.”
Dora nodded. “It will be good to
step on Earth and be free once again.
I’ve longed for it. That short spell
138
ASTOUNDING STORIES
on Venus was only enough to tantalize
us. Oh, Vincent, don’t you see how
much the super-Renolf is riding us,
tyrannizing over us? And what, after
all, has he accomplished? Nothing ex-
cept to gather perfectly useless knowl-
edge about dead things, and probably
a headache from thinking about the
mystery of the dead planets.”
Vincent chuckled. Somehow, he could
laugh at the super-Renolf’s doings, even
though he was a part of him. “A head-
ache and no more is right, darling. He
stretched our honeymoon to an exasper-
ating length, but he hasn’t any more
excuse to stay out in space. That is,
after we’ve been to the Moon.”
“But I rather suspect,” said Dora,
eying her husband accusingly, “that you
have helped him more than hindered in
all this. If you had will power, Vin-
cent, you would not put on the head-
band.”
“It’s like a drug,” admitted the man.
“I’ll have to think of a cure.”
“No use, sweet. While I live, the
super-Renolf lives.”
“You could pass on the secret.- Then
your conscience ”
“Horrors no! Not one man in a
thousand would use the power it gave
him in the right way.”
“You give your integrity a lot of
credit !”
The young husband grinned — seri-
ously. “Certainly I do. Your father
knew very well to whom he was giving
superthought.”
Dora looked up suddenly. “What
will the super-Renolf do next?”
“Who knows ? There are many things
that ”
“I thought so. I am married, then,
to a man whose will is free only half
the time or less.”
“You can divorce me.”
“On the grounds of mental cruelty.
Fine ! But at present I’ll have you.
Come and kiss me, lover.”
THE COMET plied its way Earth-
ward serenely.
Yet before they came to the satellite
of their home planet, a thing happened
to disturb that serenity. Dora, gazing
at the bright small glow which was
Earth, became suddenly aware that the
Comet was decelerating. Hastily grasp-
ing a wall ring for support, she shouted
for Renolf. He came running from
his laboratory and dashed to the con-
trols. Puzzled, he looked at the instru-
ments.
“What’s wrong?” queried Dora.
“Why should the ship increase decelera-
tion when the engines haven’t slowed
their pulsations a bit?”
Renolf had no chance to answer. The
Comet seemed to suddenly become a
thing of caprice. It spun them off their
feet and flung them against one wall.
Then, like a ship in heavy seas, it rolled
them the other way, and at the same
time pressed them gaspingly against the
floor, as though under the influence of
many times normal gravity.
A moment later it had half catapulted
them toward the fore part of the ship,
and Dora’s eyes caught a fleeting
glimpse of the starred sky whirling
madly past the side port. She gasped
in pain then as her leg was crushed
against a solidly anchored table leg.
Next moment a pair of strong arms in-
folded her, held her from being flung
away again as the cabin gyrated fitfully.
Five minutes later it all ceased as sud-
denly as it had begun. Once more the
Comet plied its way steadily with nor-
mal deceleration. The two Earthlings
arose from where they had clung to the
table, faced one another in bewilder-
ment. Despite the roughness of the ex-
perience, their bruises were light. They
might have been badly hurt under nor-
mal conditions of full gravity.
Dora was left to her own conjectures
about the inexplicable cause of the
Comet’s waywardness. Renolf had
seated himself before the controls, study-
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
139
ing the instruments in profound detach-
ment, making no answer to her query.
Had the Menace warned again?
XI.
“I SUSPECT underground habita-
tions,” confided Renolf. ‘‘For the sim-
ple reason that Earthly telescopes would
have discovered cities on the surface.”
The Comet was drifting over the harsh
lunar landscape. In the zenith of the
heavens floated the Earth, like a balloon.
Low over the horizon was the Sun, so
brilliant now that they had to wear
smoked glasses to look at it. Renolf
nosed the ship across enormous moun-
tain ranges.
Finally they came to the “crater”
Copernicus. And here they saw evi-
dences of former life. The apparent
bottom of the huge crater was the arti-
ficial roof of an underground city. So
strongly had it been made that only in
two places was the sturdy shield dam-
aged. The size of the holes attested
to the tremendous weight and bulk of
the meteors that had managed to burst
through.
Into one of these splintered gashes
Renolf lowered the ship. Using their
powerful nose searchlight, they distin-
guished what remained of the ancient
dwelling. A series of vertical shafts
gave access to the entire structure. They
extended no less than ten miles down.
Ten miles of intricate chambers, once
the abode of a multitudinous race in-
deed! Renolf estimated there might
have been twenty million individuals, if
they took no more room for living quar-
ters than Earth people.
And, of course, the place was absolutely
devoid of life. Yet the Moon people
had been somewhat exceptional metal
workers, for much of their machinery
was intact. Of interior cars, elevators,
monuments, and such, a great deal re-
mained yet uncorroded.
“A race of supermechanical endow-
ments,” concluded Renolf. “For this
represents an antiquity of millions of
years. No other race has built such last-
ing machinery. And, beyond a doubt,
at the time they were built, they were
meant to last along with the race. The
race, however — died out !”
RENOLF had come to accept more
or less the inevitable. It was no less a
mystery, but a mystery having no an-
swer. The Earthlings visited several
other craters. All, without exception,
were underground habitations. “Which
means,” formulated Renolf, “that the
craters, contrary to Earth’s pet theories,
are not natural, but artificial. The
Moon people, when their air became too
thin to support life, dug in to preserve
themselves.
The craters could be explained in this
way — that they first sunk a shaft in a
level spot, hollowed out their future
home, and used the rock matter above as
building material, compressing it to a
small bulk for strength. That left the
depressions we so naively call craters.
Whatever they could not use they piled
up as the rim surrounding so many of
them.
“But there are literally thousands of
craters!” gasped Dora.
“And there must have been billions
of people,” added Renolf. “Far more
than the planet could have been capable
of supporting as Earth now supports
her population. That indicates, you see,
that after the planet died, so to speak,
the race rose to its greatest heights, sci-
entifically and numerically. And on
Titan, Callisto, Mars — all the rest, the
same. They increased, multiplied, when
Nature had failed them. What in the
name of the universe could have then
eliminated them? One great civiliza-
tion after another !”
Then they came upon a crater whose
floor was intact. Dora exclaimed in
excitement, for how could they be sure
there were not living people below it?
140
ASTOUNDING STORIES
Renolf, too, became excited. Then the
answer came — from above. Even as the
Comet drifted down, closer and closer,
a great shadow swept over them. In-
stinctively Renolf stopped the ship, and
not an instant too soon. A titanic bulk
plunged from the stars above, just miss-
ing the nose of the Comet.
The Earthlings looked at one another
white-faced. Their screen would have
been pitifully inadequate to shunt aside
such a monstrous meteor. Suddenly
Dora, looking downward, choked and
pointed mutely. The meteor, missing
them, had fallen into the crater. Intact
a moment before, the artificial roof was
now marred by a large hole.
“If there are people down there,”
gasped Dora, “they have just experi-
enced a terrible catastrophe!”
“We’ll go and see,” said Renolf, once
again calm.
They descended by the way the me-
teor had opened up to them. A half
hour later they emerged. The meteor
had done no more than crumple and de-
stroy an empty temple. Those craters
with unmarred roofs held no more of
living creatures than the others. They
left in a curious state of relief and
crushed hope. It would have been a
fitting climax to their spatial jaunt to
find, at last, living creatures, but it
would have been heart-rending to come
upon them in the midst of a frightful
calamity.
“Let’s get back to Earth,” said Dora,
shuddering. “I’ve had enough. This
exploring of dead planets is dismally
depressing.”
Vincent, with the headband off,
agreed. But after they had slept with
the Comet parked on the broad expanse
of a flat plateau, Renolf decided that
they must visit just one more crater.
“Tycho. The one with the curious
radiating lines surrounding it. I must
see what supermetropolis once reared
there.”
Renolf followed up one of the strange
white “lines,” and even before coming
within sight of Tycho, knew them to
be enormous conduits. Whether for
water or transportation or what, could
not be ascertained.
THEN Tycho itself became a spot on
tbe horizon toward which the Comet
eased itself with gentle rocket pushes,
upheld by diamagnetism. Suddenly the
two Earthlings were thrown off their
feet from where they had been standing
at the side port. The rockets thudded
valiantly, but the ship did not move, as
though its nose were stuck in an invis-
ible wall of resilient putty. Then the
axis of the ship, under the hammering,
shifted and the nose turned upward.
With a belated surge, tbe Comet
streaked skyward.
Renolf came to his feet quickly and
jabbed at the controls. The rockets
died out in the rear and came to life
in the front. Then they, too, were shut
off. Renolf studied his instruments.
“What happened?” cried Dora, stag-
gering to a wall chair. She winced at
a sharp pain in her ankle.
“I wonder,” returned Renolf puzzled.
“The jets did not fail — the diamagnetic
engine is functioning. Everything is all
right.”
“But we struck something!”
Renolf waved an answering hand to-
ward the port.
“I know we can’t see anything,” said
Dora. “But the ship did strike some-
thing — an invisible something!”
Renolf made no answer. Instead he
carefully maneuvered the ship, pointed
it toward Tycho, and sent it forward at
a slow crawl. It went twenty feet, fifty,
a hundred. Then abruptly, without a
sound, it came to a dead stop. Dora
looked around bewildered. Outside
there was nothing, not a shimmer or
suggestion of even a screen like that
of the Comet itself.
Renolf backed the ship away, moved
at right angles to their destination for
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
141
a few hundred yards, and then headed
for Tycho again. The Comet crawled
forward slowly, then stopped. Renolf
moved a lever. The rear jets burst out
in a sudden thunder. Yet, though the
ship trembled like a live thing, it stood
still !
Renolf cut the rockets, and let the
ship float on diamagnetism. “We are
pushing against an electronic screen of
tremendous strength. Something like
our own screen, but a hundredfold more
adamant. I used a jet force of over a
million milli-ergs. Our own screen must
have simply buckled and pressed flat un-
der the strain.”
“What can it be?” asked Dora in a
whisper. “It can’t be natural.”
“Hardly,” agreed Renolf.
“Then some — some person, some
mind, must be behind that screen!”
“Logically, yes. And I’m going to
find out ”
Suddenly he stopped speaking. There
swept over the two Earthlings a subtle
wave of prickling sensation. The air
of the cabin electrified. The duralumin
walls began to glow eerily. Renolf
made a gesture toward the controls,
alarmed at the phenomena. But he
found himself curiously unable to ac-
complish his moves. Almost as though
he were paralyzed!
Waves of indefinable energy flowed
over the two Earthlings; like graven
images they sat. Unable to summon
any voluntary action to their muscles,
they waited for — they knew not what.
Renolf concentrated mightily, thor-
oughly alarmed now, straining to break
the intangible bonds. His veins stood
out purple, his muscles knotted. But
something had congealed his centers of
locomotion. Then he relaxed resign-
edly.
Dora, frightened, wanted to cry out,
wanted to creep to the man’s protective
arms. But the mysterious force held
her enmeshed as though in chains. She
was barely able to roll her eyes in
Renolf’s direction. And in them she saw
a strange look of expectancy. As
though he were listening for something.
At the same moment she seemed her-
self to hear, faintly and inarticulately,
a “voice.” But not a spoken voice. A
disembodied voice. A voice in her
brain. And for the next few minutes
she continued to hear that ghostly voice,
always indistinguishable. But the mean-
ing seemed to be ever on the verge of
her understanding. She caught at times
snatches of meaning. She recoiled at
the broken suggestions.
RENOLF, however, understood more
clearly. His ten-brain contact gave him
a vaster conception. The mysterious
telepathic voice became rapidly under-
standable to him. Unable to do anything
else, he concentrated on reading the mes-
sage it conveyed. As he later translated
it for Dora, the voice ran as follows:
“Time has passed to a certain extent
since last something intelligence made
bumped into my protective force wall.
A long time in your conception, but not
so long in mine.
“You the taller creature, have diffi-
culty I see in understanding this mes-
sage, simplified though I have made it.
The other creature cannot understand
at all. You must both be of a low men-
tality compared to the other intelligences
which have at one time or another arisen
here in the solar system.
“You understand quite clearly now?
I see that; I will go on. You furnish
me with a momentary diversion from
my eternal thought. It is my whim to
humor myself by explaining who I am.
I am the Spawn of Eternal Thought. I
have come from the void. Our race
grew up on the planets of a sun so re-
mote, and so different from this one,
that to explain is impossible.
“In short, our race evolved from ma-
terialism to pure thought energy. It took
a period of time to which the life of the
solar system is a mere instant. Our
142
ASTOUNDING STORIES
race, instead of growing into more and
more individuals, condensed through
long ages into fewer and fewer indi-
viduals, but each more powerful in
thought energy. At last came the great
day when our race merged completely
into one mind essence.
“I am that mind essence. I am the
end result of evolution on my planetary
system. For long ages then, I the
Spawn of Eternal Thought, lived in
bliss, contemplating the greater mys-
teries of the universe. It is not con-
ceivable to a material creature like you
what sublime happiness there is in abso-
lutely inactive thought. To you it
would be madness. To me it is the true
life.
‘‘Now, I see the question in your
mind: ‘Why am I here, if I was so
happy and content in my own world?’
“I will explain. Wrestling with the
cosmic secrets of the astral universe, my
thought energy slowly weakened.
Thought takes energy, and that energy
was not being renewed. Thereupon,
with my immeasurable powers, I disin-
tegrated one of my sun’s planets and
absorbed it into my being. That sufficed
for another great age. Then I felt
the inexorable drain again, and disin-
tegrated another planet to feed my es-
sence. One after another, I used up all
the planets and finally the giant sun it-
self. Thereupon, I was sufficient unto
myself for a long time, so long that there
is no number in your puny tables to ex-
press it.
“Inevitably, came the time when I
must search for new fodder for my
eternal thought energy. I then wafted
my being to another sun system and con-
sumed it. Then another and another.
Now I am here on this one.
“This one, however, is unique, in that
it had developed on one of its bodies a
race of thinking creatures of compar-
atively high order. That was on the
fifth satellite of your sixth planet from
the Sun. I saw immediately that by
absorbing their developed mind essence
into my own, I was renewed for a short
time. But when that short time was
over, another race had developed, this
time on the first satellite of the fifth
planet.
“The next race to develop to a de-
gree of intelligence suitable to feed mv
mind essence, was located right here on
this body. And so on. Eight times
have I fed from the evolutionized races
of this solar system. The next race to
feed my mentality will be your own, but
that will not be till they have risen
above their present crude state. Then,
perhaps, I will procure three more re-
juvenations — the second, fifth, and sixth
planets.
“BUT, if you can understand, these
are mere nibbles to my psychic appetite.
Eventually I shall be forced to consume
the worlds themselves. But they will
supply my energies for periods of time
— as you understand time — that are in-
finite compared to what you call ‘ages’
or ‘eons.’ After that, when I have con-
sumed your Sun, too, I shall wander to
another planetary system. I shall search
for planetary systems in the future
which are habited like this one. The
intelligences of your races is still sweet
to my taste. After all, planetary ma-
terial is so bitter and has to be purified
so greatly before I can absorb it.
“In duration I am eternal. I am the
Spawn of Eternal Thought. I met one
other such essence in my astral wander-
ings. But it was weaker than I. I con-
quered it and absorbed it. I am in-
vincible, all-powerful, eternal.
“You are the one whose mind my will
stumbled against, wandering about in
the untarnished solitude of this planet
system. For a time I was curious that
your radiations were so strong, and so
well-ordered. I thought of extinguish-
ing you, like I did the mentality which
created you back on your home planet.
Instead, I have contented myself in toy-
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
143
ing with you, testing your powers. For
your undeveloped state, you are
strangely alert and well-mentalized.
You intrigue me, puny being so grossly
ugly with your little mentality. I could
in an instant extinguish your tiny mind
spark ; I, who am a flame.
“Instead I shall let you live for a
while. Let you squirm in the knowl-
edge that at any instant I may annihilate
you. And I shall let you plot in vain
with your people against my downfall,
for I am all-powerful, eternal, invincible.
“But go — I tire of radiating such
simple thoughts. In a little while — an
age from now in your simple concep-
tion — I shall arise and absorb your
race’s mind essence into my own. It
is a great honor. And if But
enough. Go!’’
i\s Renolf heard the imperative com-
mand, a violent force seemed to clutch
the Comet and fling it far out into space.
Stunned, Renolf was barely able to whip
his flagging senses alert. He jabbed
weakly at the controls and managed to
check the frightful acceleration. Then
he slumped over the pilot board, com-
pletely enervated. The paralysis had
drained his nervous system.
XII.
TWO DAYS LATER, the Comet
left the Moon at a mad pace. Its course
kept it out of sight of the crater Tycho
till they had gone halfway to Earth.
Then Renolf breathed easier. “So far
so good. I don’t know what sort of
chance we've taken, but I’ve got the in-
formation I want. I now know the limits
of the energy wall that protects the alien
being — our long-sought-for menace! It
is a hemisphere twenty miles in diam-
eter. I know, too, something of the
nature of that screen, what its salient
physical attributes are. I have even cal-
culated, tentatively at least, what force
would be necessary to disrupt it. And
it is a staggering figure.
“The Spawn of Eternal Thought — as it
so proudly calls itself — has shielded it-
self to the limit. It lies there like a
diamond-shelled clam, waiting in calm
tirelessness for its next period of — feed-
ing! And we, the human race, are to
be the next in its epicurean search for
mental delicacies !”
Dora shuddered, as much at his look
as at his words. For since the numb-
ing revelation of Tycho’s secret,
Renolf’s face had grown haggard, har-
ried. A king might have looked like
that, knowing an invincible enemy was
slowly preparing to attack his kingdom
and wipe it from existence.
Dora wished then, fervently, that they
had never left Earth. That her father
had never succeeded in making a super-
man. They had flitted through the solar
system, reading part of its stupendous
history, and had finally blundered on a
secret never meant to be revealed to
mankind. And knowing, what peace
could there be for them? What good
for the turkey to know it would end in
a Thanksgiving dinner?
In answer to her thoughts, Renolf
spoke: “Better that we know! Better
the indomitable resistance of slave to
tyrant than the unknowing bliss of
herded steers.”
“But it is such a dreadful knowledge !
And so — hopeless!”
“Hopeless? That I will not admit.”
Dora remained silent.
“You think,” said Renolf with a stony
smile, “that I have finally come to over-
estimate myself. I — a mere trick of
superscience, as Earth knows science —
facing an unthinkably superior mental-
ity and refusing to admit preordained
helplessness ! The futile conceited cour-
age of a worm before a hard-hoofed ox.
Perhaps ”
Renolf suddenly broke off. His
strong hand trembled suddenly as he
raised it to his creased forehead. Dora
read something in the gesture — some-
thing she had never seen in the super-
144
ASTOUNDING STORIES
Renolf before. And it shook her to her
very soul.
“Renolf !” Her voice was anguished.
“You— aren’t ”
There was a long moment of silence.
In that moment a mind — hyper-human
in its range, but yet human— saved it-
self from madness, by staring into the
eyes of devotion and faith — and love —
and gaining thereby a new foothold.
Renolf, breathing heavily, wrenched
his eyes away from the twin pools of
anguish that stared from Dora’s face.
“Weakening?” he suggested. “Losing
hope? No. Yet I might have— with-
out you— precious ”
It was the first time Renolf — the su-
perman — had broken through his re-
serve to reveal his secret reverence for
the girl who had been his unwitting
guide and check. Stunned, blasted to
the core of his being, profoundly shaken
by what had leered threateningly from
Tycho — Renolf, superman, had ex-
pressed hope in the face of supernal
peril with his mouth, the while his soul
had shriveled within him.
But now it would be different. Dora’s
loyalty, more powerful than her utter
despair, must be matched by the best
effort of which he was capable. Renolf
faced Earthward with a new determina-
tion.
A GROUP of ten earnest-faced men
stared aghast at the tall, youthful figure
standing before them. A youthful fig-
ure, but in its face an untold wisdom.
They were the Supreme Council of
Earth, the body the Benefactor had
formed to guide humanity to a better
life. Sage men, learned and highly in-
tellectual. The Benefactor, a ten-brain
unit, had given impetus to the rise of the
new order.
These men, a ten-brain group almost
as efficient, were carrying it along.
They had been chosen carefully. There
was not a Judas among them. Wield-
ing a great power, the Supreme Council
had, in the four months past, carried
along the Benefactor’s beneficent work.
It had several times faced minor crises,
and ridden over them. But now a
greater, and far different, crisis stared
them in the face.
Renolf had recounted to them what
he had found on the Moon. Realiz-
ing he must tell the whole story or noth-
ing, he had recapitulated the entire jour-
ney he and Dora had made to the plan-
ets. His simple eloquence left no room
for doubt. Unwilling belief struggled
over face after face. A cosmic voyage
in search of a stupendous secret. Its
amazing climax there at Tycho. And
the man who spoke was none other than
the Benefactor — a name already half
mythical. Incredible as the story was,
his word could be only truth.
Finished, Renolf took a deep breath.
The councilors looked at one another in
stupefied horror. There was a tense
silence. Then the chief councilor found
his voice. “What you have told us is
hard to credit. Yet we have no choice
but to believe. Of course, this is not
as great a shock as it might havtf been,
in that three years ago — just after you
had begun to institute the New Order
— you intimated that Earth might be
in danger of invasion from other-
worldly races.
“At that time we were more or less
skeptical ; remained so, in fact, until
this day. And when you put through
the plans of building a city in the Sahara
whose sole industry was to be the manu-
facture of superpowerful, long range
weapons, we were still skeptical. In-
vasion from space! Preposterous!”
The speaker paused, and his face grew
suddenly haggard. “But now, knowing
the truth, our only consolation — a piti-
ful and selfish one at best — is that the
doom will not come for a long time.”
“But come it will,” said Renolf with
conviction.
AST-9
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
145
THE CHIEF COUNCILOR spoke
again, showing his agitation in fluttery
movements of his hands. “And, know-
ing the truth, it is enough to destroy
our initiative. Why did you tell us?
It were better kept a secret! What in-
centive have we now to carry on the
New Order? All our work will go for
nothing — with an inevitable doom over
the human race, despite its remoteness !”
There was again a silence, and the
councilors looked at Renolf in silent ac-
cusation. He had poisoned their minds,
telling them the truth. It would throttle
their very spirits.
But Renolf’s voice boomed out vigor-
ously in the midst of the depressed si-
lence. “We are not going to lose cour-
age and hope. Nor are we going to
rest in inactive consolation that after all
it won’t affect us, or our children, or
even our children’s children. Our duty
is to fight the doom !”
“Fight it! How?” wailed the chief
councilor. “As you have intimated, the
being is a vortex of pure thought en-
It was unbelievable! A solid building, capable of holding
all of Earth’s population at once!
AST-10
146
ASTOUNDING STORIES
ergy. Wise beyond human understand-
ing ; powerful beyond human thought.
What can we do against such an om-
nipotence ?”
Renolf shook his head. “No, not an
omnipotence. I have told you that the
alien being is a frightful superpower. A
bodyless, intangible vortex of distilled
thought, surrounded at will by an im-
penetrable hemisphere of energy. In
short, impregnable to any human
weapon.
“But now let me modify this. Instead
let me say that the enemy is a decadent
being, long past its prime! This is a
deduction of my own too vague to
clarify. The fact that it consumed mat-
ter to feed its alien energies proves it
to be not entirely thought energy. It
must have some connection to the ma-
terial universe, however slight.
“Furthermore, after it had so in-
differently flung our ship away, as a
mammoth might flick away an ant, I
returned. What chances I took, I don’t
know. But I crept, in the midnight of
lunar darkness, to the edge of its hemi-
spherical shield. There I made certain
tests of that invisible screen.
“It is not actually an impregnable
screen. But it would take a force com-
parable to planetary momentum to pierce
it. Yet I believe I have such a force
at my disposal ! My space ship is run
by intra-atomic power! And you men
know what intra-atomic power means.
I have made tentative calculations. If
a thousand tons of sand is instantane-
ously disintegrated and projected as a
beam, that force may not only pierce the
alien being’s invisible armor, but crush
it flat in one stroke !
“And if my deductions are correct —
that the being is material in some small
way, and that it is decadent, and there-
fore unwary — we can grind it into the
rock of the Moon and utterly destroy
it !”
The faces of the ten men eagerly lis-
tening to him were swept with some-
thing of stirring hope.
“But it will not be an easy task,” went
on Renolf. “I have used atomic power,
but only in a trifling way. The prob-
lem of disintegrating and using the latent
atomic energy of a thousand tons of
sand is no mean one. In fact, before
I could even think of attempting to solve
its technicalities, I would have to have
the help of perhaps a hundred brains
highly competent in science and me-
chanics.”
“We hereby pledge our support,” said
the chief councilor eagerly. “We will
issue any mandates necessary to con-
script labor and material — and the spe-
cialized men you just asked for — for the
project.”
Renolf’s eyes suddenly glistened
strangely. “What I am about to say
may shock you more than anything. I
said I would need a hundred brains —
and that is exactly what I mean. Not
men, but their cranial organs !”
HE held up a hand as some of the
men half arose in bewildered astonish-
ment. “The secret of my superhuman
powers is a secret I cannot give away,
even to you whom I have chosen as the
most enlightened and trustworthy on this
Earth. I can only reveal that my hyper-
human knowledge — which more than
once must have irked your curiosity —
is not a natural, birth-endowed lore, but
a product of science. I am a labora-
tory-created superman. And I can be
made into an ultra-superman with your
cooperation — a hundredfold mind ca-
pable, I believe, of offering a chance to
destroy the alien enemy at Tycho.
“I leave the decision to you council-
ors. I shall neither command nor cajole.
It is in your hands. I, the Benefactor,
promised never again to force myself
on human affairs. I will not break that
promise now. It is possible, of course,
to let the matter drop — to hope that
mankind, knowing its doom, may find
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
147
a way to vanquish the sinister alien
power lying in wait on the Moon. How-
ever, I offer here and now to take up
the task and finish it in one bold stroke
— but I must be given my hundred
brains !”
The chief councilor, incapable of be-
ing further surprised, spoke quickly:
“How much chance is there of your
scheme working? Perhaps it would be
suicide to strike and fail — the alien
power might then arise in wrath and
destroy the Earth!”
Renolf shrugged. “I can give you
the mechanical chances of success —
after I have worked out the problem —
but even then I could not figure the
chances of fate. No one can tie down
the future and say this and this will
happen without fail. Be assured that
I would not tackle the project at all
had I not a great deal of faith in its out-
come. But I see indecision in every
face, and I can’t blame you. If you
wish, I shall leave now and let you
come to your choice after due deliber-
ation.”
The chief councilor nodded. “Yes,
that would be best. But do not leave.
Step into the next room for only an
hour. We have always found quick
decisions as worthy as long- f ought-out
ones.” His eyes glowed strangely as he
conducted Renolf to the door to the next
room.
An hour later Renolf was called in
again. The ten councilors stared at him
gravely, hopefully, and the chief arose
to speak :
“It is the wish of the Supreme Coun-
cil, here met, that you, known to Earth
as the Benefactor, once again give to
humanity your magnanimous and in-
estimable aid. We pledge to further
you in your plans to the full extent of
our ability !”
Renolf bowed his acknowledgment
of their faith and respect. “But the
real purpose of the project must be
kept secret,” he admonished quickly. “I
told my story to you men because I
know you to have the expansive type of
mind capable of sustaining the shock of
the stark truth. But the masses of
Earth — they would fall into a panic.
The project must be named something
else, something Earthly. Perhaps, after
we have succeeded — or failed, as there
is no absolute assurance of success —
the world may be told ”
XIII.
DORA, her smooth brow furrowed in
deep lines that had never been there
before, faced her husband. Her eyes
were deep pools of wisdom, and her
piquant features were drawn into lines
of concentration and power. Almost
forbidding in aspect, she parted her
tightly drawn lips, and spoke : “I am
ready!” and her voice was strangely
deep.
“Oh, I hate to do this C’ cried Vin-
cent. “To subject you to the strain of
regulating and controlling the powerful
surges of ten brains. And you a woman,
the one I love ”
“Vincent, I am ready,” intoned the
girl calmly. “We have already dis-
cussed the matter and come to this de-
cision. With the hundred-brain unit,
your thought processes are incredibly
rapid, and your patience incredibly
short. My wearing the ten-brain head-
band affords just the medium of con-
tact you need with this work which we
are undertaking.”
“Of course, you are right,” said Vin-
cent. “I worked a month without an
intermediary, and it has become im-
possibly difficult to transmit my ultra-
superthought. Now for a test. I shall
take a dozen vector equations, run them
through at a good speed, and give you
the elements of the curve in one-two-
three order. You must repeat it within
ten seconds!”
Renolf now picked up a leather head-
band around which were placed six small
148
ASTOUNDING STORIES
receptor boxes. Snugly fitting it to his
forehead, he snapped one by one the
catch switches. As though some in-
ternal upheaval were taking place, his
face convulsed and changed till it be-
came a livid picture of powerful thought.
A hundred masterful brains pulsed and
throbbed in his skull.
Suddenly, with oddly luminous eyes
staring at nothing, he ground out
through clenched teeth the equations
of complicated mathematical vectors —
twelve of them. After a moment of
thought, he spat out harshly the ele-
ments of their combined curve product.
Dora, almost as quickly as he, re-
peated the result, her voice a blur of
speed, for ten seconds was not a long
time in which to reel off such an equa-
tion. She looked up then.
“It will do,” snapped Renolf — the ul-
tra-super-Renolf. “Now I shall be able
to work twice as fast with some one
to follow me, although I still have to
hold myself in check. Come, let’s tackle
first that tantalum-radium interlacement
for the ionic grids.”
Renolf stepped to a towering appara-
tus and tripped a lever which sent leap-
ing power into a bank of giant tubes.
Through a double eyepiece he then ob-
served the alternate swing and pivot-
ing of five separate potential dials. Now
and then he would bark a series of or-
ders, and Dora at a control board would
send flying fingers over buttons and
switches.
His orders were not in words, but
in technical formulae. Formerly ten
men had been needed to carry them out
— but never as efficiently as he wished.
They had always been in one another’s
way. Now the girl, working easily and
surely, carried out his commands with-
out an instant’s delay.
An hour later Renolf snapped off the
switches, jerked off his headband, and
stood panting and sweating. Dora also
removed her headband and they stood
facing one another.
“Great!” exploded Vincent. “I ac-
complished more in that hour than ever
before in ten. And it was your idea,
you darling genius !”
“Don’t give me credit,” said Dora.
“It was simple enough to figure out.
You were wearing yourself down, forg-
ing ahead like a Titan, and half your
results went for nothing because the
technicians thought you were talking in
Martian.”
“Still I think you’re a genius,” said
Vincent, sweeping her into his arms.
“How do you like being a superman —
or rather, a superwoman?”
Dora wrinkled her nose in mock dis-
taste. “I could pass it up any time. But
I guess I'll never catch up with you.
First I had one brain and you ten —
now I have ten, and you have a hun-
dred! It’s my fate, I guess, to be sev-
eral brains behind all the time ”
The rest was squeezed out of her by
Vincent’s bearlike hug. “Come on, let’s
pass the rest of the evening brainlessly,
just for a change. To-morrow — we’ll
get down to some earnest work.”
STILL very much in love, they
sauntered for a moment out on the roof
of their combined laboratory and home.
In the magic wash of moonlight, the
brooding Sahara Desert spread all
around them. But it was not desert in
the immediate vicinity. All around lay
the geometrical pattern of a small city —
a city built in three months in the heart
of the great African desert.
It had been planned and built by
Renolf at the time of his dictatorship,
as the Benefactor. Only the councilors
had known that he wished the Earth to
be made safe against invasion from
space. It had been his plan to con-
struct powerful defensive armament in
the Sahara, and then to spread it all
over the Earth. Now it was to be
different. It was to be a campaign of
offense.
All that the world at large knew of
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
149
the secret doings in the Dark Continent
was that the Supreme Council had daily
conscripted dozens of men and immense
quantities of supplies and apparatus and
shipped them there. All the rumors
afloat — and some of them were wild in-
deed — fell far short of hitting upon
what was really being done.
The two humans on the roof felt a
chill as they gazed upon a huge, amber
moon which pushed itself above the
horizon, despite the tropical heat. It
was a lovers’ moon, magnificently beau-
tiful in a soft, black sky set with flam-
ing star points. But to them it was a
dreadful reminder of impending doom,
and the crater Tycho, with its radiating
lines — it was like the evil eye, casting a
spell on Earth.
“The Spawn of Eternal Thought !”
breathed Dora, with a strange catch to
her voice. “All this” — she waved her
hand to include the buildings around
them — “to fight a single being who uses
not a stick or stone to protect itself. Oh,
Vincent, what if we should fail?”
“We can’t! Or we mustn't!” The
man's voice was grim. “Even if we
must take that last, desperate chance !”
“You mean ”
“I mean have two charges ready. The
first, a thousand tons of sand. The
second — a million tons! I’m having the
projector built to take safely that sec-
ond- charge. But its recoil is going to
give the Earth an awful jolt— maybe
even throw it off its orbit. That’s why
I’m hoping the first shot will do the
trick.”
“But how will you know when and
if to shoot the second?”
“One of the ultra-super-Renolf’s lit-
tle brain children. To leave out tech-
nicalities, an infinitely sensitive cosmic-
ray set will signal — ring a bell — if the
first charge bounces off. The first charge
will — if it doesn’t smash the being’s
screen flat — at least tend to flatten it
a measurable amount. The cosmic-ray
unit will tell us if it does. If the being's
screen succumbs, the unit automatically
cuts out, and the signal will not ring.
Otherwise it will, and four seconds later
the million-ton charge will blast up
there.”
“We’re taking an awful chance,” said
Dora. “I looked over the recoil equa-
tion on it. It gives me the creeps.
Looks too much like the momentum-
velocity product of Earth.”
“I know,” said Renolf. “But it’s the
only way. If we try a succession of
gradually larger charges, the alien being
would skip as quick as that and come
at us from behind like a raging lion.
Our only little chance is to smash him
flat in one swift stroke, before he has
a chance to guess what’s coming at him.
And since I don’t know how powerful
his screen is, I must use the greatest
single force at our disposal, even at the
risk of another danger as a result.”
“How about the Moon itself?” asked
Dora. “Will even the first charge
throw it off it’s orbit? I imagine the
second must for sure.”
“That I can’t say,” mused Vincent.
“You see, I can’t figure the absorption
value of the being’s screen. It may
neutralize, by its tremendous resiliency,
a great part of the charge, first or sec-
ond. But small worry— what happens
to the Moon. If only I could cancel
part of the recoil here on Earth — that
would be a load off my mind.”
AND it was the recoil angle of the
great project that concerned the Su-
preme Council more than anything.
Renolf made great strides with the
projector, but the problem of reaction
was not so easy.
“Can’t do anything about it,” he
bluntly told three councilors who had
left their manifold duties for a day to
visit him in the Sahara. “I worked on
it for a week. I have come to the con-
clusion that it would take a dozen men
with thousand-brain units to devise a
suitable bracing system, with a force
150
ASTOUNDING STORIES
beam anchored to the Sun. But you
can’t even have men with thousand-brain
units. Their minds would burn out. I
myself can wear the hundred-brain head-
band only two hours out of twenty- four,
else I should go insane. No, Earth will
have to take her chances. You, of
course, will have to follow my plan and
have all coastal cities evacuated at the
time of firing.”
“What will we tell them?” wailed a
councilor. “Millions of people to be
moved inland — they will probably riot.”
“Tell them sea serpents are rising out
of the ocean and heading for attack,”
said Renolf ironically. The councilors
looked shocked and hurt. Then they
grinned weakly, forgiving him. A man
with the burden he carried could not
be expected to be nerveless. Nor al-
ways genial.
And Renolf’s nerves were becoming
raw and frayed. Months of hard work,
ceaseless experimentation — they took
their toll. Yet he refused to slacken up,
fearing that the alien being might now
and then be in the habit of spying on
human activity out of curiosity. It
would not do for the enemy to catch
them in the midst of their unfinished
project.
The Menace had said : “Any instant
I may annihilate you.” Renolf’s only
consolation was in knowing that an “in-
stant” to the alien being was perhaps
years to Earthly conception.
Dora, despite the superhuman ability
given her by the ten-brain unit, was
hard put to it to keep astride the demon
of swiftness which Renolf was. For
two hours each day he would rattle off
a steady stream of formulae and test
results, as she madly dashed from one
experiment to another. Dora was sec-
retary, assistant, and interpreter all in
one.
Each day, after their two-hour flurry
of activity, they would rearrange their
results and pass them out to a huge
staff of technicians and engineers. These
men, in turn commanding small armies
of help, would turn out material re-
sults from the reams of equations. It
was the most colossal cooperative system
ever organized on Earth. In efficiency
it ranked with the smooth working of
a termitary, or ant hill. What might
have taken industrialized science a cen-
tury to develop, the city on the Sahara
brought to its last stages in less than
a year.
Perhaps the Sphinx- — had it not been
too far north to see — might have cracked
its rigid expression of somnolence at the
astounding creation which budded from
the desert sands. A thing of metal, the
projector which was to hurl the un-
leashed forces of tons of sand molecules
Moonward, reared ten miles into the
sky. It was as enormous in comparison
to anything else man-made, as Renolf
was to any of his fellowmen in men-
tality. It was incredible — like an esca-
lator in a wasp nest, an electric light
in a Stone-Age man’s cave. It was far
beyond anything humanity had ever be-
fore erected. Perhaps, taking into ac-
count its great purpose, it was above and
beyond anything intelligent life had ever
before created in the history of the solar
system.
IT WAS, in its simplicity, a straight
metal cylinder with a polished interior
of chromium, its end rearing gauntly
into the lower stratosphere from a cir-
cular cement base a mile in diameter.
It was set rigidly and could point to the
Moon — and to Tycho — only at a pre-
destined time.
Then, when the zero moment came,
a thousand giant disintegrator tubes
would play their fierce radiations on a
thousand tons of sand and send an in-
conceivable beam of force toward the
Moon at the speed of light.
It was to be progressive disintegra-
tion — the thousand spots affected react-
ing instantaneously on the whole — as the
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
151
spark ignition of a gas cylinder, or the
detonation of a charge of explosive.
And if the first charge did not crack
the alien being’s screen, the second
would be sent — the macrocosmic energy
of a million tons of matter!
Renolf, of course, had had to take
into account the relative motions of the
Earth and Moon. The beam, at the dis-
tance of the Moon, would have an effec-
tive area forty miles in diameter — twice
the width of the being’s screen. The
second charge — which could not reach
its objective sooner than four seconds
after the first — would have the fulcrum
of its effective nucleus displaced some
fifteen hundred feet, but would still
safely include all of the enemy’s terri-
tory. Basically, it was as simple as that,
taking for granted the production of
the energy beam. But the meticulous
aiming of the beam was a Herculean
task in itself.
All scheduled construction was fin-
ished a month ahead of the date of fir-
ing. Renolf and Dora — and a small
staff of technicians — spent most of that
month attuning the Cyclopean machine’s
reflectors. Displaying an ingeniousness
that left the scientists gasping, Renolf
showed how his key reflector was to
aim the beam.
This was not to be done by the long
sky-stabbing tube — as a cannon muzzle
determines the flight of a shell — for it
was merely a shield to protect the Earth
from harmful radiations. The actual
precise aiming was to be done at the
start, with an immense faceted reflector
set below the suspended sand charge.
The second and much larger sand
charge — distributed in a thousand sepa-
rate containers circularly between the
great disintegrator tubes — was out of
range of the rays as long as the first
charge was there. But should the auto-
matic cosmic-ray set-up signal back, the
ray tubes would again flash for an in-
stant their catalytic energy. And, un-
hindered by the focal obstruction, this
time the beams would bore on and
simultaneously set off the thousand sec-
ondary charges.
Of course, the multiple second charge
would completely disintegrate the firing
chamber, but only after it had served
its purpose. Renolf allowed himself
only one second to set the key reflector
after the signal. Even then he feared,
secretly, that the Spawn might have
time to build a greater screen, should the
first charge fail. It might be that the
Spawn, feeling the shock of the first
assault, would instantaneously throw
around itself a screen adamant to any
known force, or else whisk itself away
with lightning speed. Renolf wished he
could lash out at the alien being from
close — from a space ship. But no space
ship could be built to withstand the re-
coil, or even carry the equipment.
He wished too that he might adapt
his fourth-dimensional infinite velocity
principle to the beam — that space-time
warping form of energy which had
given him instant contact with his ten-
brain unit, even when he, wearing the
receptor headband, had been as far away
as Saturn. But that would have taken
years of work. It was like trying to
extend the muzzle velocity of a rifle to
its farthest range.
“WELL,” said Renolf the day be-
fore the date of firing, sighing heavily,
“technically we are assured of success.
Actually it is in the hands of fate, for,
after all, we are dealing with an almost
absolutely unknown problem.
The being may be, as he claims, a
vortex of pure thought energy. In that
case, our beam will simply pass through
without effect. Like light going through
clear air. But if the Spawn has some
slight connection to the material uni-
verse as we know it — even if but a skel-
eton of energy patterns known to our
physics — the titanic club of force we
152
ASTOUNDING STORIES
are sending to him will rip him into
scattered shreds of radiation.
If the Spawn has a core of material
molecules, or a nerve network of static
energy, or even a “skin” of confined
etheric radiation — he will succumb. If
not — if he is composed purely of an
alien system of intangible energies —
then we cannot touch him!”
XIV.
AND on that depended the fate of a
great civilization. Not only of Earth’s
civilization, but of those yet to be born
— ^n Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. Al-
ready eight great races of intelligent
life had been wiped out ruthlessly by the
Spawn of Eternal Thought. Were the
remaining four of the solar system to
reach that frustrated climax in their
evolutionary rise ?
The day dawned cold and clear. Late
in the afternoon a full Moon leaped
above the horizon and climbed steadily
into a cloudless sky. Millions of eyes
all over the Earth looked at it casually,
little knowing that it held a great secret
of potential doom, for the Council’s
campaign of secrecy had kept the truth
from the masses.
Millions had been moved from all
seaboards over the entire world. Mil-
lions had refused to leave their homes,
scoffing that a mysterious tidal wave
was to sweep over all the oceans. The
Council had cajoled and threatened, but
had finally left them unmolested, for
there was not time enough to begin a
forcible evacuation of all cities within
a hundred miles of ocean seaboards. It
was plain that Earth was to pay for her
freedom from the alien menace with
many unfortunate lives.
The city on the Sahara was completely
deserted. The Gargantuan projector
was unattended by a single human soul.
Five hundred miles away, in a secret
establishment on the Nile, Renolf and
Dora stood before the master control
board. Dozens of high officials were in
the other rooms of the building.
Two hours before the moment of
firing, Renolf donned his complex head-
band, giving him the lightning percep-
tions and mental activity of a hundred
brains. At the same time Dora snapped
the catch switches of her ten-brain unit.
Then Renolf began a careful resume
of what their task would be. To Dora
was allotted the dozen controls which
would keep the giant dynamos feeding
their tremendous power to the disin-
tegrator tubes as they warmed up.
Renolf himself would handle the three
master dials which controlled the key
reflector and its elaborate system of
lenses.
The room they were in had but one
window through which they could see
the tropical Moon climbing to zenith.
But they would not have time to look
at the Moon at the last minute. Dozens
of ingenious instruments — far more ac-
curate than human vision — would be
their eyes.
RENOLF finished repeating his in-
structions for the third time. It was
but five minutes before the great mo-
ment. Dora looked at him searchingly.
His face, beneath its superimposed look
of cosmic wisdom, showed haggard and
uneasy. The steady, superhuman work
had sapped his strength.
The man stared back, breathing
heavily. Something flashed between
them. Not the undertsanding of two
superminds — two multiple brains. But
the subtle affinity of two souls mated
eternally. Then, as one, they took a
last look upon the undimmed tropical
Moon, now almost in position overhead.
How beautiful it was; how innocent-
looking in its virgin whiteness! Yet
there at Tycho, in the center of radiat-
ing white lines, crouched an ageless
menace, waiting like a beast of prey.
Waiting as an eagle might for the first
SPAWN OF ETERNAL THOUGHT
153
tremulous flight of a dove, so that it
could devour it before it became strong
and swift. Those other civilizations —
those of ravaged Titan and Ganymede
and Mercury — they had been destroyed
before they had reached full maturity.
This was to be their avengement — by a
sister race of the same Sun.
Renolf turned suddenly from the win-
dow and watched the chronometer,
whose subdued tickings marked the pass-
ing of sidereal seconds, with an error
no greater than a millionth of one sec-
ond unit. When it lacked but three
minutes of the time, he waved a hand.
Dora promptly manipulated her con-
trols. Dial needles quivered and crept
swiftly along numbered scales. Five
hundred miles away a thousand ionic
grids were surging with increasing
power.
A minute later Renolf touched his
hands to two of the three dials before
him, twisting them slowly. At the same
time he watched intently the readings
of a dozen indicators above. A mirac-
ulous pulsing quantum of fourth-dimen-
sional energy was probing the sky,
finding the exact edge of the Moon. A
secondary pencil of superswift radiation
— like a mechanical draftsman — was
marking the precise center of the orb
above. Renolf depended on these error-
less robots to guide him in setting his.
reflector system squarely on Tycho.
The chronometer gave out a soft bell
note. Sixty seconds to go ! Thereafter,
the two humans reacted to each swing-
ing needle and shifting reading as
though they were the pulse beats of their
, own hearts.
For a panic-stricken moment Dora felt
a sense of inadequacy — felt a sinking
inability to keep the giant power at her
finger tips from running away with her
— blasting out of control and leaving a
vast pit on the desert floor. Then she
drew on the reserves of her superhuman
contact, and steadily applied the enor-
mous currents to the great atom-splitting
tubes. She had no time to look at her
coworker.
If she had, she might have been ap-
palled. His face a livid battlefield of
concentration and power, he was setting
his reflectors with delicate precision.
Beneath his intense purposefulness was
a strange look of apprehension. •
Ten seconds ! Nine — eight — Dora
turned a dial with bated breath. Seven
— six — Renolf twisted a vernier care-
fully. Five — four— three — they looked
at one another soundlessly for a split
second ; all was ready — two — one
The world felt a shock. All over the
Earth, people stared at one another in
sudden fear. An Earthquake — thought
many. Those who had experienced the
temblors of Earthquakes before knew
it was something more. Earthquakes
were a trembling of the ground under-
neath ; this was a sudden, tingling blow,
as though the whole Earth had leaped
ahead! In inhabited parts of Africa and
southern Europe, many persons were
f thrown off their feet.
INSIDE the remote control room on
the Nile, Renolf and Dora paid no at-
tention to the shock attendant to the
automatic firing of the charge. Their
whole mind was bound up in their in-
struments.
Something less than four seconds
after the first thousand-ton charge had
blasted its fury heavenward in an invis-
ible beam, a tiny bell clinked sharply.
Renolf, who had been twisting his dials
during those seconds for a new setting
of the key reflector, immediately set his
vernier ten points further. The first
charge had failed to crush the being’s
screen ! Renolf ’s soundless curse was
drowned out in a blast of sound that
seemed to come from everywhere.
At the note of the bell, Dora had
paled. Yet her hands had jabbed quickly
at a dial, stepping up the system to full
power. Then a giant hand seemed to
154
ASTOUNDING STORIES
pick her off the floor and throw her
against the wall. All went black before
her eyes.
When consciousness came to her, she
thrilled to And herself in Renolf’s
strong arms. He clutched her to him
with a fierce exultation.
“Are you all right, dearest?” he asked
anxiously.
“Yes ”
Renolf then set her on her feet. She
noticed his headband was off. Some-
thing felt strange to her, and she reached
a hand to her head to feel her own
headband missing. She saw it on the
floor at her feet. The chronometer
showed her that it was five minutes since
the charges had been set off.
“Vince! The result ”
“Perfect !” cried the man. “The sec-
ond charge did the trick! The Spawn
of Eternal Thought is no more ! I know
because the two aligning beams of super-
radiation back-fired with something that
blew out the whole works back here.
Only one thing could have done it — the
collapse, or implosion, of the being’s
screen, sending out a wide vortex of re-
action waves of the fourth-dimensional
order.
“It is absolute, scientific proof that the
beam we sent up there to Tycho knocked
something all to hell, like a meteor
splashing into a lake and drenching an
observer a mile from the shore. We’ve
done it! We’ve done it!”
Renolf skipped around the room in
an abandon of relief and joy.
“But Vince ! What about the recoil —
what about Earth? How did that turn
out ?”
Vincent sobered suddenly. “Not as
bad as I thought. I mean that although
the recoil was enough to shake us off
our regular orbit, the Earth staggered
through with flying colors.”
“How can you know that already?”
asked Dora dubiously at the same time
staring out the window to see if per-
haps there were some indication that
the Earth was plunging into the Sun,
unloosed from its age-old orbit.
“I don’t know, of course,” returned
Vincent. “But the super-Renolf does.
In those few minutes after the shock
he figured tentatively from the reaction
gauges there that the recoil had failed
by just a little to jolt the world into a
dangerous position.
“As it is, however, the Earth is taking
up a new orbit. In a few days it will
be more than a million miles nearer to
the Sun, and its period of rotation and
revolution have been increased some
tenth of one per cent. But that is noth-
ing serious — not compared to the doom
we have taken away from our future.”
He sobered still more. “And, of
course, the jolt has been great enough
to do much damage. This place, built
especially on bedrock and of superstrong
materials, withstood the shock as I
planned it should. But elsewhere peo-
ple have not been so fortunate. In all
the big cities, many buildings have prob-
ably collapsed. Thousands have been
killed by falling things. And in a few
hours a terrible series of tidal waves and
storms will sweep over all coasts.
“The next few hours will be hours of
suffering and terror. All the millions
who know nothing of all this will think
the Earth is coming to an end. There
will be fire and madness and pain and
great fear ”
Dora touched the man’s arm. “You
are the Benefactor again, Vincent, wor-
rying over your people. But they will
understand when they hear the truth.
They will know that the Benefactor has
saved their posterity from a hideous
menace. My father — you will insist he
be credited above you, I know. But
they will honor you, forever, Vincent,
for what you have done.”
The End.
Three Classics Only?
Dear Editor :
Some months ago I promised you a letter of
unqualified praise. Much as I would like to live
up to that, I find that a few of your good points
have been lost in the interval. Nevertheless,
you are still at the top of the profession. Of
course, this refers to your stories, since I do not
buy the magazine for the pictures, letters, or ad-
vertisements.
As for the stories, only three A-f- ones have
ever been printed. They are The Skylark of
Space, the Fifth^Dimensional Catapult and The
Fourth-Dimensional Demonstrator. This man
Leinster seems a worthy successor to the much-
lamented Thorne Smith. In the past four
months you have received five A ratings, and
©ne each of C, O- and D. The rest, including
the entire February edition, were about aver-
age. The D was awarded to Forbidden Light
which must have been put in the wrong maga-
zine by accident.
It is with the deepest regret that I learned
of the passing of Mr. Weinbaum. He was prob-
ably the best author you have ever had, and
was responsible for three of the A’s mentioned
above.
It may seem a minor matter, but is it really
necessary to put an exclamation point after each
caption in Brass Tacks? It would probably be
appreciated if you printed the answers to some
of the questions asked. The rest of us would
like to know, too.
Congratulations on a year well started. — Alan
Beerbower, 943 John Jay Hall, Columbia Uni-
versity, New York City.
Isn't This Issue Even Better?
Dear Editor:
After finishing the March issue of Astound-
ing I lay it down with a feeling of satisfaction
— and regret. The feeling of regret was natu-
rally caused because there was nothing more I
could read. It was, in my estimation, an ex-
ceedingly good issue. If all the future issues
of Astounding measure up to the March issue
our magazine will be practically perfect.
Stanley Weinbaum’s death, I am sure, has
given science-fiction as a whole a severe and
painful shock from which it will never quite re-
cover. From his gifted pen arose characters who
will live forever in the hearts of every true
science-fiction fan.
All of the stories were good, but the two I
thought most outstanding were Entropy and
Redemption Cairn. The superb characterization
in both stories made the characters fairly live.
Fine work Mr. Schachner ! Keep it up !
It will be impossible for me to make any com-
ment on the serial. I’m one of those people who
waits until he has all the installments before
he starts reading. I find it saves the nerves ! —
P. L. Lewis, 232% N. Everett St., Glendale,
California.
I Appreciate This Cooperation.
Dear Editor :
Just got the new February number and what
a surprise ! Trimmed edges ! Must I say that
this is the biggest thing since you gave us
Ancestral Voices ? Gosh, editor, you really de-
serve a big hand for this attempt. We know
that it is costing you more but we are sticking
and gaining more readers for you. During the
last four months I have found thirty new
readers for Astounding and am still trying to
find more. I wonder what those new readers
will say when they find out that the magazine
has changed to a new face?
You have brought Wesso back. We are glad
and we welcome him, thanks to you. But here
is hoping that Dold will be back in a short time.
We will be missing him. Please try Clay Fer-
gusen, Jr., on your pages. I know he has some-
thing.
We are patiently waiting for a quarterly. —
J. R. Ayco, 510 A. Mabini, Manila, Philippine®.
Love craft Again .
Editor, Astounding Stories:
It was Lovecraft’s name on the February is-
sue which brought your magazine to my atten-
tion. As I make it a practice never to start a
156
ASTOUNDING STORIES
serial until I have all the parts I cannot pass
Judgment on this story yet.
I liked F. B. Long, Jr.’s, Cones and Miller’s
The Shapes in the February issue. In the cur-
rent issue, Weinbaum’s interplanetary adventure
Redemption Cairn is tops.
Even if every story isn’t a winner. Astound-
ing is the best-printed and illustrated science-
fiction magazine on the news stand.
I also noticed that Astounding has heeded the
cries of the readers and given us the straight
edges all magazines worth saving should have. —
Harold F. Bensom, 56 Harris Ave., West War-
wick, Rhode Island.
Pointed Comments.
Dear Editor :
The trimmed edges make a fine improvement
in both appearance and facility of handling.
Our magazine is now a hundred steps ahead of
any other magazine in the field. I suppose that,
with the increased popularity that will inevi-
tably befall Astounding Stories, other much-
asked-for improvements will gradually make
their appearance. I’m not kickin’, though.
Now that the other science-fiction magazines
have gone bimonthly, I’ll vote for the semi-
monthly Astounding.
Schneeman has improved his style greatly,
but still is at the bottom of the list of illustra-
tors. One can always tell which story is the
poorest in the issue — the editor gives it to
Schneeman to illustrate ! — Willis Conover, Jr.,
280 Shepard Ave., Kenmore, New York.
" Our Rocketr
Dear Editor :
Congratulations ! You have done it ! Our
rocket is rocketing up toward the zenith of
zeniths — perfection ! I have read the science-
fiction type of magazine for years and can
safely say that your magazine is undoubtedly a
phenomena among all magazines — in this field
and all others. At the present, Astounding
Stories is far superior to what it was back in
1932. You have indeed done a fine piece of
work ! Now the smooth edges are to Astound-
ing Stories the same as a coat of varnish to a
masterpiece.
But don’t get a swelled head — you have your
faults, too. Though they are not numerous,
they exist. The most prominent is the lack of
editorial notes in Brass Tacks and the lack of
some science-discussion page.
When a reader writes a letter to the editor
of a magazine, through the readers-discussion
page, he naturally expects some answer, hence
editorial notes.
I have noticed some cranks trying to actually
kill the magazine by demanding that it become
a bimonthly I should think they would want It
issued semimonthly, or even more often than
that.
Now, with your kind permission, let me state
some views concerning what I call- science.
Here goes ! What has a beginning must have
an end, for example : A line. No matter how
far extended, it must come to an end, for it has
a beginning. The only exception to this rule Is
an oval or circle. The oval and circle offer a
microbe a journey which would end only after
the creature’s death. Now' for space : I send
out a ray of light which can penetrate any sub-
stance without even losing its intensity. This
ray will travel at a rate faster than light. The
ray has a beginning ; it therefore must have an
end. Its end will be the end of space. There-
fore. space is not infinite, merely finite.
If space is finite, then it must take the form
of — let us say — a soap bubble, but perfectly
formed. The planets and systems are mites
of dust floating in it. What is outside of our
bubble space? Undoubtedly another space bub-
ble. Assuming that each atom in our system is
a small solar system, then there must be atoms
in that system and so on down the line. These
systems must, in some way or other, form a
cycle — for is not the only infinite figure in a
circular form? That is, if I were to shrink
from our system into the next smaller — and so
on down the line— eventually I would wind up
back in our own system. Therefore, I could
continue infinitely as long as I lived, repeating
this process. Therefore, the system of these
systems must form a cycle. Therefore, the
clearest thought would be of a set of gears
representing the systems arranged so that they
get larger and larger as they go along, until
they reach a point where they begin to decline
again, until they are so small as to be equal to
the gears at the beginning. They have formed
the cycle.
Or think of a string of beads — the type
which get larger as they go along the string,
until they reach their maximum size, and then
decline until they are back to the smallest size
again, around the throat of one of the fairer
aex they form an oval. But what is outside of
our cycle? Another cycle perhaps. If not,
then what? Therefore, isn’t that good old-
time religion much more substantial by far?
Now that that is off my chest, let me offer you
my best wishes for the future success of As-
tounding Stories. — Herbert J. Rosenthal, 158
Van Buren St., Brooklyn, New York.
A Dimensional Discussion.
Dear Editor :
I have been a reader of the various science-
fiction magazines ever since they came out and
I am afraid I am a pessimist as far as most un-
proved theories are concerned.
Take the fourth dimension. Can w T e con-
ceive of any such dimension? Take a cube, for
instance, and extend every side of it to infinity
and we would still have three dimensions.
We are given a lot of bunk about beings
in the fourth dimension being able to pene-
trate any solid bulk in the third. The example
being given of a box, etc., where a being of
the third dimension can penetrate the second.
Does a being in the third penetrate the sec-
ond? For example: Take a sheet of tin and
let a being in the third pass his hand through
this sheet of tin and reach to an object beneath
it. It cannot be done. The second dimension
has no thickness — absolutely none. This means
that the being in the third does not penetrate
the second but merely comes in contact with it.
Can there be beings in the fourth dimension
w'ho are able to pass to the third and not be
harmed? If it were possible to have any being
in the fourth dimension, it Would consist of four
dimensions. First, second, third, and fourth.
The third dimension of the supposed fourth-
dimensional being would be visible to all of us.
The fourth' dimension would however be beyond
infinity, as the third dimension extends to in-
finity for all of us.
How many points can there be in a straight
line? The answer is infinity. How many lines
in a plane. Infinity. The number of planes in a
cube is likewise infinity. By the same line of
reasoning we would have an infinite number
of solids in the fourth-dimensional object. This
puts the fourth dimension entirely out of range
and comprehension of a three-dimensional being.
Again, could there be a two-dimensional be-
ing? For those in the third dimension, no two-
dimensional being could exist. A plane does not
exist as such but is a mathematical conception.
No one has ever been able to make a plane. You
say that the surface of an object is a plane,
but you cannot produce a plane alone since it
hasn’t any thickness and contains nothing.
I do believe that both Campbell and Smith
are on the right track and that some of the
ideas advanced by them will be realized by
future generations. Most of us have studied
along certain advanced lines. We haven’t the
money to carry on the research and experimen-
tation necessary to reach definite conclusions re-
garding these theories. If we were to advance
BRASS TACKS
157
any of them as facts we would be laughed at.
The only safety valve we have is to write a
fiction story embodying some of our theories.
Wells advanced the poison gas in one of his
stories and the Germans were the only ones
who were smart enough to take advantage of
the idea. We have inventions in common use
to-day about which if any one advanced the
theory of possibility one hundred years ago, he
would have been locked up as dangerous. I
could write pages along this line.
One of the oddest that I have run across in
recent years is a party in Italy who claims that
by pressure of certain glands in the neck the
subject can see through solid walls and tell what
is going on on the other side.
I am from Missouri, but I was sufficiently in-
terested to get in touch with him and learn the
larticulars of his experiments. He advised that
te had subjects who had looked the Moon and
Mars over and had drawn pictures of animal
and vegetable life on both. Some of the Eu-
ropean film companies are going to make films
showing his results.
I wish you every success in your publication
to which I am a regular subscriber. — T. A.
Hunter, 10 Stone St., Yonkers, New York.
The Music Goes Round
Dear Editor :
He pressed the old keys down and out came
Mathematica ; or maybe he simply put 2 and 2
together. Some story ! Darn it if it doesn’t
beat Aladdin. You don’t even have to rub a
lamp. What does Fearn mean by an indivisible
sum? Could it be our old pal of high school
days : S.T7~ Try to solve that one.
At the Mountains of Madness is one keen
yarn. Let’s hope it keeps it up. That first il-
lustration rather gave one the feeling that the
mountains were on an entirely different plane
than the figures — rather a different set of di-
mensions as it were.
Death Cloud has an old theme but is very
well written. It’s good reading but a bit like
the liappy-ever-after ending of a fairy tale.
The rest rather lagged behind but they helped
to maintain your balance.
Now a suggestion to your fans who save your
magazine for binding. I find that the maga-
zines look better when bound if the edges are
cut just enough to do away with roughness.
That is the issue previous to the February issue
— let’s hope all future issues are trimmed. — -
Lyle Dahlbrun, 601 Benton Ave., Kock Rapids,
Iowa.
Another fob?
Dear Editor :
The first thing I turned to when I picked up
the March issue of Astounding Stories was the
Editor’s Page and so it was with deep regret
that I learned of Stanley Weinbaum’s death. It
is one of the hardest blow’s dealt to science-
fiction.
The next paragraph cheered me up a bit for
I am anxiously awaiting Wellman’s return and
the new serial by Eando Binder, scheduled for
next month. Now that you have trimmed the
edges and got Wesso back, there is very little
left about Astounding to improve — for you've
done a fine job ; but there is one thing that is
lacking — that is, a companion magazine to
Astounding.
Fantasy -fiction not only takes in science-fic-
tion but weird-fiction as well. So how about re-
viving Strange Tales? I am sure that you
would receive every reader’s support that you
have gained in putting Astounding Stories
across. What do you say? It is up to you to
>ut this question of revival before your readers
n the form of ballot or otherwise.
The cover for March is an excellent example
of Brown’s unsurpassable and superlative work.
— Seymour Dickman, 3425 Knox Place, Bronx.
New York.
Are Edges O. K.?
Dear Editor :
Your edition of the February Astounding
Stories was the worst issue I’ve contacted in.
about two years of perusing your science-fiction.
Wliat’s the matter with our good authors:
Weinbaum, Schacliner, and a few others? Where
are they? Where are those nice long novels full
of science, adventure, and romance? Why can’t
we crowd all three into the fiction? I must
praise you on the cut edges. It’s really a pleas-
ure to handle them. — Seymour Schwartz, Bronx,
New York City.
Still Improving .
Dear Editor :
The March number shows great improvement
over the February issue. At the Mountains of
Madness was superb. Don’t let Lovecraft get
away. Entropy started off with a bang, but the
end seemed rather insipid. The theory that
matter, as we know it, ceases to exist when
absolute zero is reached is a little far-fetched.
The shorts were all fine except A Little Green
Stone. The only decent story by Haggard that
you ever printed was Human Machines.
The cover was fine. It looks much better with
the unnecessary wording off. June, August,
and December, 1934 : February, August, and
November, 1935 ; February anil March. 1936,
are the finest covers you have had.
The appearance of the magazine haR greatly
inmroved since you gave us trimmed edges.
With an editorial reply after each Brass Tack,
a scientific editorial, and an author’s page, As-
tounding should be perfect. — Sydney Slamick,
199 Callender St., Dorchester, Massachusetts.
Aren't We Constructive ?
Dear Editor :
I have been a regular reader of Astounding
Stories ever since it was first published and I
consider it a wonderful stimulant to thinking.
But why do all the authors for Astounding
picture all the other planets as being inferior
to Earth? Why is it they consider Earth the
most perfect of all the millions of whirling
worlds. Even ants have a higher organized
system of society than humanity. I feel sure
that my old friend Nat Schacliner and Starzl
as well as many other authors of Astounding
realize the deplorable conditions of society on
Earth as it now exists in comparison to what
it should be and could be if we should unite
for a better world.
May I suggest that we have a few stories like
Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward and
Equality, staged on Mars or Venus or any other
planet? It’s increased constructive thinking
that we need and Astounding Stories may as
well carry some constructive economic stories
along with its fiction of exaggerated science-
fiction. — J. L. Stark, Tyler Hotel, Louisville,
Kentucky.
I'm Not Fond of War Themes, Are You?
Dear Editor :
This letter is not a threat, but a plea. Please
won’t you see if you can’t persuade Don Stuart
to write a sequel to Rebellion -t For instance,
couldn’t the Tliaroo. with the aid of the science
the Earth Tliaroo brought to Venus and with
the strength and determination the Tliaroo that
landed at Venus must have developed at fight-
ing the heavy jungle, return to reconquer the
Earth? Then couldn’t Mr. Stuart portray a
titanic space war, ending by having the Thar do
158
ASTOUNDING STORIES
entirely exterminated? Of course, these are
only samples of what might happen, hut again,
please try to see Mr. Stuart about said sequel.
— Leonard Bailey, 1404 S. Kenilworth Ave.,
Berwyn, Illinois.
In the June Issue:
My dear Mr. Tremaine :
All congratulations on the publication of
H. I*. Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness,
one of the finest novels it has been my pleasure
lo read, irrespective of its excellence as an As-
tounding story. Don Wandrei tells me that
Astounding Stories has another of H. P. Love-
cruft's coming up; publication of Lovecraft’s
work is a signal step in the increasing excellence
of the magazine. — August W. Derleth, Sauk
City. Wisconsin.
A Veteran Speaks.
Dear Editor:
The Astounding Stories for February is sure
the top ! The cover is a marvelous piece of
work, per usual, and the interior decorations
are O. K.
I enjoyed all the stories, particularly Mathe-
inatira. The Shapes, and Blue Magic.
The featured serial At the Mountains of Mad-
ness, by H. P. Loveeraft, is certainly a spell-
binder and I do not intend to miss any of the
installments. I believe it is one of the most
fascinating stories that I have read, because of
the realistic style of writing.
I have been a science-fiction fan for about
ten years, and I believe your magazine has
reached an excellence in quality unequaled by
the larger science-fiction magazine of prede-
pression days, and, of course, leads the field to-
day. How about a nice, big, Astounding Stories
Annual ?
The clipped pages are much appreciated. —
Gene Pigg. 1909 N. 48th St., Seattle, Wash-
ington.
“Mathematica Plus " Is Here.
Dear Editor :
I have read your magazine ever since it was
first published. The stories are fantastic, and
seem real and well-written, even though some
of the stories contradict each other. I have
never written you before and hope to see this
in print. As 1 am a believer in science, I like
your magazine and delight in reading all the
things that the stories seem to make real. I
can’t see why some of the things can’t be
worked out and brought into being, although
some of it is very diabolic and life-defying.
My perspective to all the stories in your
magazine is far-reaching, like thought itself in
Its mathematical equations and solutions. I
could rave on but I don’t wish to bore you
with mere words. The thoughts brought on by
your writers are nonestimable, and words can-
not express that of which an imaginative mind
is capable.
Will you kindly inform John Russell Fearn,
author of Mathematica that I wish him to fin-
ish his story? How in the world did he get
back to earth to write his story ; that’s what I
wish to know. T speak of him as the one in
the story, his character, you know. A very
good story, but not finished.
I also wish to comment on the trimmed edges
of your magazine now. Very, very good and a
great step to improve your magazine and bring
new readers who can only be told about rough
edges on the old issues and do not have to suffer
now. Enough said, and here’s to a very good
year and good stories. — -Norman Haynes 1314
H. 6th St., Sioux Falls. South Dakota.
A Step at a Time, Please.
Dear Editor :
This letter is later than I expected it to be,
but anyway here it is. You know. I almost wore
the edges rough again. Hipping them back and
forth the first day 1 got the magazine. The six-
year campaign for trimmed edges on Astounding
is over. Thanks a million ! The campaign for
large size continues.
Ordinarily, I have read- the installments of
the serials as they come. However, I have al-
ways read Lovecraft’s stories complete in the
past so, this time. I’m waiting for all three
parts before I read the story.
Mathematica was a great talc. I have al-
ways enjoyed most of Fearn’s stories. Well
illustrated by Marchioni. Frank Belknap Long,
Jr., is improving as is shown in his latest story
Cones. Death Cloud was good, although it
could have contained more science. The shorts
on the whole were quite good.
Brown's cover was fair. I don’t think it
will help our news stand circulation any —
doesn’t stand for enough. That little box
again ! I do not like Brown’s inside work !
VVesso. of course, is good ! Schneeman is im-
proving. Please get Paul.
Now that you have trimmed edges, how about
doing away with the margins around the illus-
trations? And better-looking lettering for the
story titles?
Yes. The next step is large size, twice as
much reading matter per page. 96 pages. And
then Astounding Stories quarterly — twice as
big as the monthly, containing book-length nov-
els, novelettes, and shorts. All stories complete,
of course. These two steps would give the
reader as much, or more, reading matter than a
twice monthly at the present size. How abont
it? — Jack Darrow, 4224 N. Sawyer Ave., Chi-
cago, Illinois.
Good Authors Are Not Always Good
Scientists.
Dear Editor ;
Astounding Stories is allegedly a science-fic-
tion magazine ; will you stop handing your un-
fortunate readers drivel? A good science-fiction
story should contain good penmanship and good
science ! The majority of your stones contain
neither. If your illiterate thrill-seeking readers
want stories of a weird or fantastic nature, start
a new magazine — but keep that junk out of
Astounding Stories !
I quote L. C. Rome : “What do w r e care if the
story is scientifically wrong if it is good read-
ing?” (Brass Tacks, Jan., ’36). My dear Mr.
Rome, did you ever stop to consider that this
magazine is a science-fiction magazine and that
all stories, even though they contain the min-
utest fraction of science, should not be scien-
tifically inaccurate? My favorite new author Is
Stanley G. Weinbaum. Though half of his
stories contain no science, he is definitely a
science-fiction author, because those of his sto-
ries that do have science in them are reasonably
accurate, and. most important of all, bis stories
are well-written. Compare them with other
authors who write about similar episodes — for
instance : C. B. Kruse — a rotten author whose
science is nonexistent.; J. H. Haggard, same
as Kruse; Raymond Z. Gallun, not as good as
Weinbaum.
There seems to be a multiplicity of tales of
the spaceways. Cut ’em down a bit and dish
out an original plot once in a while. I don’t
mean the so-called fantasies such as Miss Moore
turns out. They are nothing but dressed-up
fairy tales.
Keep Dold and Saaty on the human figures.
Marchioni does the best machinery. All of them
but Schneeman and Saaty have too-heavy lines,
too-dark pictures. I don’t like to see a pic-
ture a dark blur of ink.
BRASS TACKS
159
I was surprised and pleased with the clipped
edges. They are easier to turn, better-looking,
and better for filing than the rough edges were.
It represents a great step ahead.
As a final, closing suggestion, print comments
at the end of all the letters and have a short,
one-page science editorial. Those two points
and the ones mentioned above are the only re-
spects in which you have room for improve-
ment. — Hayward S. Kirby, Griswold Road, Rye,
New York.
Spirit Creates Effort to Advancement.
Dear Editor :
Here goes for my annual attempt at letter
writing. First, let’s get the flowers out of the
way.
Astounding Stories has shown a decided im-
provement during the last year. I believe that
it compares very favorably not only with con-
temporary magazines, but with any science-
fiction magazine, past or present. However, it
is not this that I admire as much as the con-
stant effort at advancement, and the splendid
spirit shown by the readers. In this, I main-
tain that Astounding Stories stands alone.
Also, permit me to give three lusty cheers
for the trimmed edges, for which I have rooted
a long time. I get as much enjoyment out of
Brass Tacks as I do out of any of the stories.
Don’t curb it in any way, especially the humor.
And congratulations for printing some of the
most sarcastic letters it has ever been my priv-
ilege to read. You’re certainly fair about things.
And now, please permit me to make a few
suggestions. Please don’t build your stories
around facts, as some letters have suggested.
Let the authors have a free rein. And how
about acknowledging the story from which the
cover illustration is taken. I confess that I
have been unable to connect some cover illus-
trations with any story in the issue. But don’t
consider me against illustrations. I’d like more
of them ; they add to my enjoyment of the story.
How about getting Neil R. Jones on your staff
of writers, and Doc Keller? I have always ad-
mired their work. So, in conclusion, more
power to you, and may our magazine make as
much progress in 1036 as it did in 1935. — Fred-
erick Woerner, 1614 Summerdale Ave., Chicago,
Illinois.
An Order in Full . %
Dear Editor :
Well, well, well ! Astounding scores again !
This time smooth edges ! What next ? Paul,
perhaps, or a story by Merritt. Much as I hate
to remind you, editor. Astounding is due for
some more by Leinster, Williamson, Bates,
Stuart, Taine, and Kelly. However, that’s your
job not mine.
Wesso is fine. So is Schneeman. The cover
was good but spoiled by the red rectangle and
writing. I am glad to see that you have re-
moved “The Best in Science-fiction,” or some-
thing like that.
Now for the stories in February : I have fin-
ished Blue Magic and don’t know what to say.
It begins well and has its points but I don’t
consider it worthy of Astounding. Somehow it
failed to grip. Come again, Diffin !
The plot of Death Cloud fairly smelled with
age. Still, it was very well-written and an im-
mense improvement on Daniels’ Way of the
Earth a few months back. Feam’s Mathematica
is the best since The Man Who Stopped the
Dust and Before Earth Came.
Cones was quite good, but I'd advise Long
to return to his old style of writing. Gallun’s
short was good, obviously a sequel to M*Goc in
May, 1935, Astounding. The Seeing Blindness
was too much like The Man with the Four-
Dimensional Eyes, by Edmund Hamilton, pub-
lished in November, 1935 in another magazine.
I am looking forward to reading Lovecraft’s
new one and wonder when you will have him
■write the next serial. Greedy ! On the whole,
the February issue wasn’t up to scratch, I
think, but we’re not all perfect.
One reader is nutty. I refer thus rudely to
Mr. Robert L. Harder, Jr., of Berwick, Pennsyl-
vania. Junior! My gosh, I should say so! Say,
are you cracked? What do you mean — lightning
strikes upward? Rain will be falling upward
next. Good Lord !
Thank you for answering my letter, editor.
I hope that you will print this one because my
call for American and any other correspondents
so far has remained unanswered. Shocking!
I will answer all letters from anybody any-
where. Yes, and to tempt you, I’ll put a stamp
on my letter. How’s that?
I’m sure, editor, you’re fond of me, and, be-
lieve me, I look upon you as a father. Now,
how about J. George Frederick, John W. Camp-
bell, Jr., Robert Evans Howard, Otis Adelbert
Kline, Arthur Merritt, David H. Keller, Eando
Binder, James Montague, Anthony Gilmore, Ray
Cummings, Captain S. P. Meek, Edmund Hamil-
ton, Victor Rousseau, Arthur William Bernal,
and drawings by Paul ? And how about a
science-fiction comic strip and a quarterly? For
your repeated efforts, editor, you deserve some-
thing good! What shall it be? — Francis L.
Ellissen, 6 Cardigan Road, Richmond, Surrey,
England.
A Short-Short Story.
Dear Editor :
Here is a short story for Brass Tacks. Bill
Brooks lived in our town. Bill was a strange
man. He liked stories of the most crazy nature.
Impossible things — traveling between the plan-
ets, going back in time, other worlds, strange
people on them. Such trash, the people said !
But Bill w r as a good mechanic — a positive wiz-
ard with machinery. The trouble was with the
people, not with Bill. For Bill had brains. His
mind was not in a rut.
One day I met Bill. We got to talking. He
explained various things. He told me about
some of his experiments. I learned more from
Bill in ten minutes than I would in a year
from the rest of the town.
A whole new world was opened to me. I
fairly ate up everything in science-fiction. I
became acquainted with and read stories by such
men as Smith, Binder, Fearn, Long, and Taine.
I became interested in everything pertaining to
science. I got out of my rut. I thought again.
I hope there are other Bills with keen minds
and imagination enough to look ahead. The
world needs them.
And now for Astounding Stories : I like it.
I look forward to its appearance every month.
I have renewed my subscription. That should
be enough. To Stanley G. Weinbaum, auf
wiedersehen, friend. — Walter L. Reeves, Sharon,
Massachusetts.
Containing a New Suggestion .
Dear Editor :
Here are a few suggestions ! I hope you’ll
pardon us readers for always asking for more,
but it’s quite necessary. Dissatisfaction is the
driving urge of the universe and is the only
thing that will either keep the magazine at its
present standard or drive it ahead to “greater
glories.” Satisfaction is dry rot, and should
come only when senility is reached.
1. Include a special cut, on the contents
page or elsewhere, giving a few of the stories
coming next month.
2. If wording must be printed on the cover,
please do not have it in a huge red square
which smothers half the picture.
3. If possible, devote a few pages each month
160
ASTOUNDING STORIES
to a biographical sketch and a picture of a
favorite author.
4. A little contest now and then would be
appreciated.
5. Wesso is by far your best artist. The
more 1 see of him, the better I like him.
You have given us a magazine with smooth
edges, fairly good paper and readable print, full
of the best works of the best authors in the
field. You have brought the master of science-
fiction illustration, Wesso, back to the fold
after an absence of almost three years. I don’t
want you to think I’m not being thankful, so
I’ll apologize again for this bit of criticism.
Here are a few more opinions in more or less
condensed form : I am perhaps a bit late in
commenting on the December issue, but better
late than never. The issue contained at once
one of the best and one of the worst stories that
I have ever read. Raymond Gallun did a won-
derful job in writing Davey Jones’ Ambassador.
It had the most hackneyed start imaginable,
then proceeded to become quite as fascinating,
and in the same way as the unforgettable Old
Faithful. Give us more of Gallun !
But here’s the other extreme ! Whatever
made you accept Forbidden Light? It was one
of the most disgusting of improbabilities, dis-
appointments and idiotic coincidences I have
ever struggled through. All of its science was
incorrect, and, as an adventure tale, I can find
a more plausible one in the adventures of the
“Three Little Pigs” and the “Big Bad Wolf.”
Smothered Seas in the January issue was de-
lightful. A plausible new idea is always wel-
come when coupled with a well-written and
reasonable sequence of events. The Isotope Men
was not quite up to Schachner’s standard. I
haven’t read the others yet.
Seeing Lovecraft in the February issue caused
me to excavate the September, 1927, issue of
the first science-fiction magazine from my files
and to read The Color Out Of Space over again
for the nth time. I have never seen a more
beautifully w’ritten story in a science-fiction
magazine than that was. »I am eagerly awaiting
the rest of his latest story so that I can read it
in continuity. I read The Death Cloud and
The Seeing Blindness first in this issue because
they were illustrated by Wesso. — Oliver E. Saati,
1427 Logan Ave., North, Minneapolis, Minnesota.
A Scieati£c Basis!
Dear Editor :
I have been reading Astounding Stories for
one year, from March, 1935, to March, 1936, and
it’s the best magazine I’ve ever been inter-
ested in.
I ain of a very scientific nature, having my
own laboratory, and it seemed that when the
day’s work was done, there wasn’t any kind of
fiction I could get interested in. Then one day
in March I happened to be passing a news
stand and, lo and behold, there was Astounding
Stories, with an extract of Proximo Centauri
on the cover. I told myself that that looked
like the inside of a rocket and should be good.
And I have had one year of good stories.
One thing that eats me up is the way every
one slams every one else and the editor in Brass
Tacks. If they don’t like it, why do they read
it? It isn’t easy to satisfy a couple of thou-
sand mentalities, and they should know it.
I read Astounding for the scientific basis of
the stories. Some one else reads it for the
weird stories you publish like Buried Moon.
Even so, they have a scientific basis. I like
stories of the thought-variant type such as
Entropy , Strange City, At the Mountains of
Madness . Proximo Centauri, Mathematica, The
Isotope Men, and Mind of the World.
All of these have scientific bases many of
which are not possible now, but may be some
time in the near future.
To some people the very stories I praise may
be hackneyed, etc., but I say, carry on, As-
tounding ! — T. B. Yerke, 6818 Templeton St.,
Huntington Park, California.
Opposed to Adventure.
Dear Editor :
Congratulations on the splendid February
number. All the stories were fine, although I
thought Cones was spoiled by the poor ending.
If the rest of At the Mountains of Madness is
as good as the first part, it will be a winner.
I should like to remind Mr. McKernan that
Astounding Stories is science-fiction. If it is
adventure, mystery, or romance that he wants,
surely there are dozens of other magazines to
supply his needs. Why, there must be over a
hundred adventure stories published for every
one of science-fiction.. Do not grudge us science-
fiction fans the few magazines that cater to us.
Astounding Stories is equal to all the other
science-fiction magazines put together, both as
regards the number of stories, which is not so
important, and the quality of them, which cer-
tainly is.
So, please don’t try to get science-fiction as
it was several years ago — just a lot of wild-
West stuff under the guise of science-fiction.
Let us have as much science — accurate, of
course — as we can possibly get in, and also,
since chemistry is my hobby, as many stories
dealing with chemical experiments as possible.
May I add my plea for editorial comments in
Brass Tacks? It is the one thing needed to
make Astounding Stories perfect. — Cecile Phaza-
ton, 5 Hove Park Villa, Hove, Sussex, England.
A New Reader.
Dear Editor :
Welcome another reader to the fold. I am
here. I have only three copies of Astounding to
date but there’ll be more, the good fates being
kind. In the February issue you inquire if your
readers have introduced the magazine to any
new readers. Well, one of them has. You may
thank my very good friend, Arthur Widner of
Quincy, that I am reading Astounding. He
continually painted your magazine in such glow-
ing words of praise that when the February
issue came into Canada I bought it. Since then
I have procured December’s copy and also
March’s.
Yes. Astounding Stories is a wow ! One
hundred and sixty pages neatly printed, trimmed
edges, all my favorite authors, plus a few more,
and lastly, but in these times not least, only
twenty cents per copy ! I am with you lock,
stock, barrel, hook, line, and sinker now and
forever more — I hope.
In the December issue you mentioned that
you wanted our — the readers’ — opinions on what
stories we like. Here is my opinion :
The Roaring Blot: O. K. But I wish our
author had let our leading man go down into
“What-you-call-it” and then come up and tell
what he saw — if anything.
A Little Green Stone: Haggard slipped, in
my opinion.
Redemption Cairn: Weinbaum was good !
This story was swell !
Mad Robot: I enjoyed it, but whether I will
ever read it again or not I can’t say. I think
this was better than Buried Moon.
Entropy: Just the kind of yarn I like! And
by Nat Schachner, too ! Need more be said ?
The Drums: Another Don Keltz story. A
new setting for each story, eh? This one was
good. I like this series. Keep ’em up.
So Weinbaum is dead — just when I was be-
ginning to like him, too. I hope you have more
of his stories for us.
About making Astounding semimonthly, don’t
do it ! Familiarity breeds contempt, you know.
If you wish to do anything just keep on improv-
ing the monthly. I compared the December,
’35, and the February, ’36, issues and trimming
the edges sure helped the magazine a hundred
per cent, and I don’t mean maybe !
I don’t suppose this will get printed in Brass
Tacks but, whether it does or not, I’m going to
write you more. — Leslie A. Croutch, Parry
Sound, Ontario, Canada.
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